Gracious

Graciousness is in the ear or eye of the perceiver 

Sometimes
Lent starts late
Or Lent
Finds another time
Of year
To spend
Its forty days.
I am late
This year.
My goal
Is to be gracious
For forty days
In a row
Including Sundays.

Chernobyl voles

Back to the voles from yesterday

Have more cataracts
Than other voles.
They think it has to do
With all
The Chernobyl mushrooms
They eat.
I do not know
Of any other
Vole
Cataract
Study.
How do voles see
In non-nuclear
Waste sites?
How do they find
Mushrooms
In Chernobyl?
Do they taste
Any different?
How would
A short-lived vole
Know different?

Chernobyl beavers

I am glad Chernobyl is still being studied. I understand voles have more cataracts...but I did not know anyone else was studying vole cataracts.

They thrive,
without us.
The human-free zone
Allows
Readily gnaw-able
Birch.
They
In turn
Allow
Eventual bogs.
They
In turn will allow
Oh
Who knows
What may happen next
In the human-free zone.
Chernobyl beavers
May gnaw their way
Into
New possibilities.

Jellyfish

Who could come up with such a thing?

It seems some jellyfish
Live forever.
They move
From spore
To tentacled being
To spore
And back again.
No reincarnation
For the jellyfish.
No being named
After
Aunt Susie
Uncle Jack
Just an endless cycle
Of life
Then life
Again
Forever George
In different forms.

Wailing wall

How many prayers?

How many walls
Must we build?
How many?
Before the world
Is walled off
And we have stopped
Seeing
Anyone else?
How many
Prayers
Must be placed
In the chinks?
How many guns
Lined up
On the top?

Farmer's Almanac

What's coming, and when, and how.

The bushes begin
To appear
Once more.
What was a foot
Of snow
Is now
Six inches.
I wonder again
About a subscription
To
The Farmer's Almanac.
Still
It seems
Like astrology
Or a belief
In woolly bear caterpillars.
I would always like
A sure-fire way
To predict
What's coming,
And when,
And how.

Thumb loop

It's the little things

My first time
In a sling.
I have
The fancy one
With
A thumb loop
To hold it
In place.
Someone spent years
Designing it.
I am grateful
For
The thumb loop.
Grateful for the sling
Yes
But especially grateful
For
The thumb loop.