LA Felleman's Blog, page 4

Some are being unraveled │ Some are above it all

Photo by Diane Bentley Raymond

   The polar vortex is unstitching

  Meanwhile, the sun sews blue   unhindered by cloud interruptions

(Image from Kevin Cool, "Want to Fix Homelessness?")

Throwing Shade

Photograph by Tuca Vieira
The building’s shadow sharply demarcatesthe trees beyond its castalready unburdened of last night’s snowthe trees landscaped in lesswhere single digits chill

(Image from the article "Inequality ... in a photograph," The Guardian (Nov. 29, 2017)

Lesser Horned Deities

 

Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters

In the pantheon of suburbia

they are gods and goddesses of fringe gleanings

Holy mothers to thin coats, visible ribs

counting down the coughs echoing through their kids

Older brother immortals fixing mac&cheese dinners

fighting off sleep until they hear the click of mom’s key

Baby sister creators crawling through barbed wire

carefully molding dolls out of landfill castaways

Father God is off-continent

wires funds in spare change

Father God is unknown

a photo in a phone

Father God is imprisoned

calls collect once a weekend

Father God is dead

imagine him in greener pastures

     Image from Ariel Min, "In world’s poorest slums, landfills and polluted rivers become a child’s playground," PBS News Hour (Feb 12, 2015)

Dread the bird flying straight at window

leading with neck

fragile to impact

too much speed in degrees

too little space to spare

when the crash comes

I want reverberations to smack

Mortifying Rejections that Could Not Shame Hope

 

The queer doe leaps to a stop near the other doehaltingly steps closer to nuzzle her friend’s neck
proceeds to mount forelegs beside the other’s spine
who jolts away twisting a startled look around
the queer doe doubletakes in the same direction
staring as if demanding, “Where is the culprit?”
Glenn who guilted to be more Christian than I did
Sam who seemed to suit ‘til our plans didn’t align
Cole who could not talk me into conversation
No fault break-ups when one person in a passion
faces a friend who prefers remaining unchanged
in my bumbling way I kept courting chance, then
Dirk confessing that dating was insufficient
me conceding to the urge to believe him home

Diverse Chirps United

blackbirds pepper sky
starlings, red wings, grackles mix
multitudes flocking 
woven warbles, novel notes
instinctively various

watching the leaves fall one at a time, I recollect our vacuum

 

by David Morris 

Because you are allergic I clear the filter, and each time marvel anew at the fuzzy clump of intertwined castoffs– our dead skin cells shed singly; our hairs (your grays, my I’m-no-longer-sure-what-to-call-it-anymore color); our oils the transitory binding. 

I cringe before the wastebasket, reluctant to dispose of this little bundle of us. Instead, I lovingly place the linty mass at the balcony’s edge. Approve of the wind’s grab, running it out of sight. Perhaps this offering can serve to line some critter’s winter nest.

gust scraping ground clean

forecasting bitterly cold

I saw a cloud swell

Evergreen

 plumes of dust advance

bringing the Rockies to us

a coming cold front to add

to our acre of brittle stalks

drained of appreciable color

unending praise to the HOA

planting the baby pines

even if they do resemble eight

Charlie Brown Xmas trees

snow will silence our snickers

every community needs them

visionaries far-seeing anxious days

when conditions turn forbidding

planning in advance for everyone

a preserve of encouraging green

How To Cheer Me

Photo by Drazen Nesic on Pixnio

Endow an empty lot in native grass 

scatter throughout wildflowers

let nature course

it will find its own design

here a blade of wild rye

beside black-eyed susans

there a stand of sunflowers

heads lolling on necks

Silence the mower

stow the weed wacker

flip off the edger

kill the leaf blower

listen to a different drone

one cricket leg rubbing against another

one cicada wing sliding by the other

One hummingbird hovers near me

Let bugs be. The turkeys will hunt them

especially the juveniles

gliding off afternoon roosts

football bodies covered in black feathers

lodgepole pine cone necks outstretched

nubby bluish heads the texture of concrete

leaping above the grassline 

trying to take in dragonflies

The Last Becomes First

ugly metal interruptions

is what we complained

criticized spindly appearances

staked out in our all-natural view

those starter trees we disparaged

now the only vital remnants

amidst paled-to-yellow leavings

ghosts of former selves