Zorro

What do you do
when you’re created without a tail?
Obviously, you become a cat;
a cat named Zorro, furry, black and white.

It must’ve been hard
to grow up without a tail to chase, but
what foul air missed in swishes and twitches,
ears and long stretches made up with scratches.

To sleep forever for pearly white teeth,
is one way to slip out without saying goodbye.
But, you left everything cluttered with tears, now
your memory will have to clean up this mess.

( For my sister who just lost her cat)

Fanatical Followers

My shorts are getting seasonally shorter, and
my jeans are hanging precariously close to a fall.
I prefer the shorter to the longer, unless it’s
the un-hemmed intrusion of night into day.
But, my choices are whims of illusion, my pants,
fanatical followers of the realities of air.

Harvest Time

Her eyes have squinted tracks on sunlight
more years than first glance would show;
a smile flushes out a flock of stars
from a temple with priests of lightning and rain.
She dreams with the maidens of poppies,
but still walks with children of cloth and steel.
It won’t be long before tears make mud of earth,
and her harvest filtered through clouds and light.