Spring fever

Chicken love watermelon 

Spring and the flowers bloom

Oranges next to blossoms in the

Same tree

Early watermelon from Mexico

And the chickens love

The luscious sweet

But they don't like

Cantaloupe 

Soon the only thing left

Is watermelon juice stains

Beside drying pieces

Of cantaloupe 

Mint reaches towards sun

Open arms deep green

Mud is black and wet

Roses grandly flushed

Red leaves of the crabapple 

Tree catch and swirl 

In the wind

Dogs sleep and snore

Hummingbird clicks

A bee, then a wasp

Hover fly by

Wind chimes ring

And there I see the 

Hummingbird zoom zip

In the blue

Calling out

I am here

In this now

And me, I think,

On a day in spring 

I called in sick today

From work

Pizza pilgrims progress

A pizza Pilgrims progress 

Lo johns pizza 

Bleeker street

East village

New York City 

Holy shrine

Of pizza pies

From brick ovens shimmering

Crisp the sacred crust

Oh heaven on earth!

Is it the water?

Is it the tomatoey sweet sharp tang?

Cheese skimmed melty?

The seance in old long time

Greenwich village occupation?

The scratched scarred walls?

Generations of scrawled initials

Names dates years

Scratches on scratches

Story layers

Time travel

And time arrested

While all around Bleeker

The yogurt shops

And skinny model clothes shops

Shopping center for the few

Who can

Gucci

Gucci

Gucci

Jimmy Choo's

Live their priceless

Privilege

Lo

Johns

Pizza

Circ 1950s

I look up

At the neon sign

Glowing bright 

Look through the window

To outside

Through fluorescent 

Red letters

Caught suspect 

Spelling itself backwards

But shinning on. 

Meadowville time travel

Iridescent: 

Old house in meadowville Idaho

The things we see 

In the shimmering of time

The green fields burst with life

The sky above a dramatic 

blue-

-White cavalcade 

And the little house

Standing still

It's memories grasped

In rusted window latches

Rusted window shades

Littered floor-ceiling plastered

Broken glass

Old discarded trash

Yet alive

Dancing echoes in the air

Voices of children playing

Teacher's school bell ringing

Waiting horses swishing tails

In afternoon heat

Family home cooking at the stove

Setting sun gold sky

The windows filled by 

Exquisite meadowed landscape 

Then now today this moment

in tomorrow

Resting in heart and bone and blood

Eternal

And earth 

once and 

forever.

St Mary's all hail the uncles

St Mary's all hail the uncles

One day 

My uncle saw that BYU 

and St Mary's U 

In Moraga, Cali 

playing basketball

Or was it baseball

"I saw this as a place,"

My uncle said,

To sell my house (in Salt Lake City, UT) and move to"

Retire from retirement 

That is

"If the wife goes first"

He reiterated

Start a new life.

Then, Later, upon a separate visit (uncles not talking these live long years over an old maelstrom) 

my other uncle,

Upon hearing 

his (younger) brother 

was seeing something in 

St Mary's remembered 

Their grandfather 

Who was a janitor for

St Mary's school 

On the hills in SLC

Who said, (circa 1953 or so),

 pushing his broom,

"You should go to St Mary's 

College - it's a baseball college"

"But I never did," older uncle said, sweeping his hand out 

Over the street, yards, neighborhood,

"instead,

 I met Connie (the girl next door) and stayed right here"

Grandpa is long gone

Connie's gone now, too

The uncles are here

Caught in between 

St Mary's 

Then

And 

Now

Yearning,

Missing 

The living their life

and lonely 

All hail St Mary's,

Dear uncles.