Natural Selection

When de-puffing serum burns

                                              I remember

bowerbirds canopy potential mates, 

                                              tunnel avenues decorated with patterned bones

sandhill cranes preen feathers with mud, 

                                             fertile bodies turned summer brown

                       I soothe my eyes with frozen tea bags

looper caterpillars ornament their bodies, 

                                             blossoms guarding a feast

Cyclosa spiders decorate their webs with remains, 

                                             decoys for wasp strikes 

                     I cover my face with tinted moisturizer

                                      Camouflage depends on type.

Television Series

I've been watching Narcos on Netflix lately and have come to a conclusion about television series: I like them only in small doses. My hope was that this series covering the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar would work like a mini-series (if a bit longer), ending with the tenth episode of the one and only season. Well, at this point, I have seen eight of the ten episodes. But as of September 3, there will be a second season of (I suspect) at least ten more.

I'm not sure how many times I can watch drug kings kill each other or police ignore the law. The worst scenes, of course, are those in which the innocent are murdered, usually brutally. Now, I can handle most genres and watch many violent films, but television series ramp this up way too dramatically for my taste.

Instead I prefer old fashioned mini-series like the old Roots or the new True Detective, which takes a lesson from the British and ends story-lines each season, starting something new the next. Most series like to end with cliff-hangers and keep audiences waiting for months to see how conflicts are resolved.

Now episodic television, especially the 30 minute or less variety, does work for me. I found Catastrophe and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt fun to watch. Of course there's only verbal violence (if bad language counts). But the shows end quickly and can stand by themselves. I enjoy watching them on my computer on the back patio late at night--with my little dog beside me.

Cicadas

The Front Yard Burial Ground

She sprayed her lawn for killer cicada wasps

not knowing

they burrow into soil

building mounds like moles

where they place corpses

and lay their eggs.

When the eggs hatch, larva feed.

Even though cicadas come

only every seven or thirteen years,

the female wasp finds them,

using her one sting,

turns them on their back,

straddles them

and glides them to their grave.

The Last Thirteenth Year

Our newspaper claims they say “Pharaoh, Pharaoh”

a mating call of the plagues of Egypt coming in sevens or tens

locusts brought on the wind, cover the eye of the land

eating every tree until the Pharaoh admits his sins.

But these come every thirteen years,

teens walking hand-in-hand

under power lines along an abandoned track

climbing to the top of Rose Hill to spin a bottle and

share a first kiss.

Listening to cicadas, their twirling wings like vibrating atoms,

I feel more like a pharaoh than a lover,

letting go of the last thirteenth year

when you walked with me under singing oaks

holding a dog’s leash instead of a hand.

A Spinter in Oz

A Spinster in Oz

When she doesn’t remarry,

her father calls her

an old maiden aunt,

a spinster, 

spinning to earn her keep,

tapping a treadle

on grandma’s antique wheel.

Mostly, though, she likes to spin on grass,

turning slowly

during mother may I

faster

when the big kid twirls her

or when she rolls down Rose Mount Hill.

She even spins her swing,

circling up chain for a dizzy unravel.

When she jumps,

she feels like a witch swirling dust on arrival,

not Glinda the good

or the wickedness of East or West

but a fright nonetheless.

A dress.

Not shoes.

Not socks.

Perhaps a hat or scarf in winter

or a bathrobe at night.

warm

with her little dog beside her

she feels strong,

telling him,

You have no power here!

Be gone!

Before a twister drops a house on you, too!