​NAKED LADIES
 

They first appear in April,
green straps, no stalks. 
I say “This year they will blossom. 
Be patient.”  August comes— 
 
ground like an empty trunk.
Give me pink
when grass browns and humidity
vacuums me up like a dust
bunny.  No pink.  Until
this year. 
 
Two naked ladies,
proud, unashamed,
garden nudists, 
 
joining dahlias and daylilies,
rising up in just a few days,
surprise their gift
 
as August’s train slows
before the depot of fall.
 
 
 
 
  
HAPPY DAYS ARE NOT HERE AGAIN, YET HAPPY MOMENTS ARE
 

Sitting on the porch after a week
of ninety-degree swelter
feels good--I even cleaned it
hoping to coax better weather.
If only you hadn’t
 
brought the paper out--I see
the latest headline, someone
with power hurting someone
 
without it.  Look, a monarch
butterfly on an orange asclepias.
That flutter lifts the whole
morning.  In recent summers,
we’ve had fewer of these
 
charmers.  And honeybees!
They’re back too--their intensity
on a sunflower, only that blossom
at that moment.
 
Not a bad way to be,
sky on your back,
weightless, like joy.
 
 
 


ENGLISH 103
 
My student tells the class
about band:
              I hardly knew anyone.
              I felt lost.  Mostly
              I laid on my bed
              and waited to sleep.
              I joined band.  A drummer.
              I knew that I’d found my place. 
              Putting in many hours,
              we made music, sweetened
              game days.  Maybe 
              you think we’re all nerds. 
              Some people write poems,
              some solve equations—we
              marched and played
              our hearts out, kids
              who became family,
              some who found each other,
              often just in time.