On climate change, highway litter, love notes and Tibetan flags . . . .

Here are two recent poems of mine, related by environmental theme and loose lines of irregular length. C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag published them in its Fall 2013 issue. "Prayer Flag" appears here in a slightly revised version. C4 is an on-line and print journal based in Boston, at http://chamberfour.com/


 BEYOND THE TIPPING POINT

The summer it was no longer possible
to deny what we'd done

the roses were particularly beautiful
everyone said so
the mornings bright and calm
the nights starry

and parents and grandparents
came unmoored from long marriages
and dated and went steady like adolescents
and broke up and went steady again

writing love notes in pencil on lined paper
and doodling arabesques and spider webs in the margins
folding and unfolding and refolding the sheets
to read them over and over.


PRAYER FLAGS

Unaccountably they lift my spirits,
these plastic grocery bags the color of old teeth,
caught in fence wire, blown to tatters
by the patient prairie wind

thirteen thousand miles
from mountains where Tibetan flags
blue, white, red, green, and yellow,
shake blessing on the world.