Thumbs Up

Angels hitchhike

on the truck side of lonely.

Lovely weeds bend in the flying dust

of wheels stopping to start again.

The driver might chatter football,

the radio Gospel, or tripe.

This part of the Damascus road

is between homes, jobs, baths.

The Son of Man

has no where the lay His head.

Transients, the easy victims

of innocence and dumpster diseases.

The next Samaritan binds

the next wounds.

Our daily bread buttered,

one side at a time.

Milk Case

A Saturday sun wastes hours on
on car hoods and roofs.Thistles
finger up the wire fence,
Ginsberg's sunflower long harvested
for a milk case vase. Dogs
and cardboard circle the alley, house
numbers a cramped checklist
of sideways bicycles and smokers
drifting from the tilted mailbox
to the porch divan.

Repainted recycling sign, open
and old as Jesus when He went,
gives preference to metal;
artists welcome.  Hub caps and hip cats
still cranking lawn sculptures
to connect the wealthier
to hand me down living, the free box not
being without cost.

When the tumble comes,
and all is inverted,
the wall of old Maytags
and Wurlitzers in the barn
will speak of the trouble we took
to separate colors and dance
to age appropriate genres,
everything in common
held at arm's length, lest, like crickets, we
rub elbows the wrong way
at temperature's change.

The Sept. Set

September;
slow house flies getting dumber,
window box peas just a brown
string strung along an open door with no screen.

Beyond the fence
a foghorn taunts the end
of summer, last squeals before school
trill the beach.

Our bluff curls the blue bay, harbor town houses
honeycomb the cliff, the slightly northern sunset
a gem for their windows, the reflection,
an odd gold for the just passing by.

Tourists and townies,
gulls and cormorants,
at night buoys, boats, and God
the only ones catching the breaking
waves.

What you find in the sand
comes home in pant cuffs,
what you leave on the beach,
makes for loon tunes.