LIFE DANCE

ARK — THE THOUGHTS OF NOAH’S WIFE
Life’s not funny,
Cane toads in the dunny;
Two carpet snakes in our bedroom,
The cocky’s chewed the last straw broom.
It’s a blessing I closed the doors,
before they brought the dinosaurs!
It’s a strain;
Ten days of rain.
Our clothes mildewed
Pillows moth-chewed
There’s tadpoles in the water carafe.
Chimps a-jockey on the neck of a giraffe.
Who will He blame for closing the doors
before He missed the dinosaurs?
Ever again,
More days of rain!
There’s mice in the pantry:
Birds nest in the gantry —
Directing here for HERBIVORES
and that way for CARNIVORES.
What are they fed, they’ve grown so lean?
There’s caterpillars in the greens.
Noah’s glad I closed the doors
Before they sent the dinosaurs.
That’s a gain;
Thirty days of rain!

It’s not neat;
That cat’s on heat.
No humans sleep.
Our sons’ wives weep
through her nightly noisy passions.
We’re getting rather low on rations.
That gives me pause.
What do you feed dinoasaurs?
Meat or grain
through days of rain?
Of this floating ark
Zoological park
I’m not queen regnant
but midwife to what beast is pregnant.
This ark is bursting at the seams.
I’m heard to mutter in my dreams
“PHEW! When can we open the doors?”
There was no room for dinosaurs
through forty days of rain.

LIVING WATERS OF JOY

I wake, aware of words that bubble deep
within my caverned brain, of pulsing praise
that surfaces from joy, that in my sleep
runs under all.  The rocky floor of days
where sunshine seldom comes, is washed and swept
by overflow of joy.  It chuckles, founts
and chimes its cheer, bedews the fancies kept
like ferns on darkened walls.  Where languor mounts
his web of lassitude, sets crystalled praise.
I dip my poem-cup
where living joy wells up,
and store felicity for drier days!

VINE TALK

“the palsy”, “Parkinson’s”, “the twitches”, “shakes”
And she attained of it, knows she wears
Death’s cryptic mark, for tally that He makes
for culling, future to this harvest, one He spares
and as her fruit is cut and crushed for wine,
she bears the pruning’s pain, and dormancy
Fermenting done, He who tends the vine
will taste her yield, and judge maturity.

Marj Kosky