Sailing

I am prone to motion sickness.
It can strike with startling quickness.
I did bring meds to use,
But so far on this cruise
I’ve had no queasy blues.
The seas are calm, it seemeth,
And this boat is a behemoth!

Wigging Out

I’m going with grey
For my man-bun toupee.

I Just Kant

The thing in itself
Sits high on a shelf
Away from prying eyes.

Trust me. It’s there.
Yes, its features are bare,
But it’s sort of a mystery prize

That we like to discuss
Just among us,
To see who can tell the best story

Of intuitive laws,
Preceding all cause,
And rising beyond category.

Cats

Jennifer Hudson can sing.
Francesca Hayward can dance.
The trailer's the freakiest thing.
It puts me in a trance.

In His Shell

I was biking on a trail that goes by a small body of water, when I saw a good sized something on the road. So I stopped to check it out. It’s hard to tell from this pic, but he was big, maybe a foot wide?

When I returned, he was no longer there.
I won’t say he vanished into thin air,
Since, unless I make a mistake,
He probably vanished into the lake.

At Moonrise

A baby baboon
In a bassinet
Blew a rollicking tune
On an ancient bassoon
While a dancing raccoon
Played the castanets.

Looking Back

We thought that when we landed on the moon,
The Soviets would be behind us soon.
But decades after we swore “the moon or bust!”
It’s just American footprints in that dust.

Grumble

How annoying of clouds
To turn loud.

50th Anniversary

Old poem of mine about a big day for the human race, the first moon landing.

The arena is silent -
Indifferent.
Nothing lives nor stirs -
Except -
What’s this occurs?
A man has stepped -
Put his print -
Into the sand -
And,
Behind him, distant,
A race has learned to stand.

Delightful

I’ll tell you a truth that I have grasped firsthand:
The children of your children are truly grand.

Trying Out

When auditioning,
I try to just do it.
I feel for those listening
Who have to review it.
They must guess who’d be best
To cast in their show.
That job is hard, too.
Trust me, I know.

Grown to be Shown, Not Thrown

Snowballs in July
Please the eye.

After the Break

On this day when we celebrate our break with England, I was reminded of my shock in coming across a statue of George Washington in London’s Trafalgar Square.

After the break
We found ways to make
Common cause
Always deeply aware of each other’s flaws.

Molded

From a book I just finished: “...the environment and our own choices molded us as much as our genes.” (Darkship Renegades by Sarah A. Hoyt, p. 465 in paperback edition.)

Well said, and I liked specifically that she included our choices as something that makes each of us unique. In the endless nature vs. nurture debate, you too rarely hear choice mentioned as a viable third force that shapes our characters. For a while I’ve pondered what third word could possibly work poetically with the other two. Tonight I’m thinking of calling it the nature vs. nurture vs. virtue debate. Virtue has a nice verbal ring with the other two, and in philosophy something called Virtue Ethics seems to be a rising cause. It seems to derive from Aristotle whose ethics made much of the way choices accumulate to become virtues or vices.

When it comes to a pleasing phrase
I find I cannot rest
Until the way I plead my case
Passes the aural test.

***

Nature, nurture, virtue:
All three have a role
In shaping who we are,
At the core of our soul.

Picnic Favorite

When I was a kid, I thought the dish
Was simply called Cold Slaw.
So who was Cole and why did he wish
To eat his cabbage raw?