Smoke Break

Lucille sat behind the warehouse in a contemplative mood.

She stared down at what was left of the cigarette between her fingers as if it contained the answers to all the mysteries of the universe.

She slowly brought it to her wrinkled mouth and took one last drag.

The tobacco-incense she exhaled drifted away across the heavy morning traffic.

She flicked the butt onto the pavement as she stood to go back inside.

Forgetting How to Fall Asleep

A train wails at the edge of night.
What sleep have I had? Very little...
Okay, concentrate, lie very still,
think of nothing at all, not even sleep.
But the day is swirling, my heart is racing,
my breathing is under my conscious control
(such a fragile feeling) - Okay, hear I go...
No, still wide awake...this isn't so easy.
I'll try maybe coming up with some rhymes:
Was it the tea or the chocolate cake?
Whatever it was, I'm still wide awake...
No, that didn't help -
The tree-shadows quiver, the rabbit-moon shines,
there are words on the ceiling in the crooked lines...
That's awful -
Every solar flare is rightfully named
after the one who first saw it, and had it framed -
Was that a half-dream? Now at last...
That's how I know that I'm fading fast:
nonsense thoughts intruding in,
there it is again:
something about horses
eating steaks with knives and forkses
from square leather plates...
the soft darkness around my face,
breathing dark light, it won't...be long...

A little orphan tear

A little orphan tear
slipped quietly out
from the asylum
of the eye
that beheld
such tender
and exquisite joy -
and fled swiftly away.

A Cautionary Tale

It was purposely and without remorse,

and with the aid of a reluctant horse,

that all the children out in the yard

pushed on the Old Wall very hard

until it toppled over with a crash.

Then Oliver, who was always brash,

surmounted in glee the pile of rubble

and said at last it would be no trouble

for them to come and go as they please,

they could even walk out among the trees

that surrounded the village on every side,

beyond the wall they had all decried.

But dusk was falling and light grew dim,

so Oliver, smiling, said unto them:

"Now off to bed - I will show you tomorrow

that being closed-in has been our only sorrow."

So each to their pillows and blankets withdrew

and dreamed of a world so wide and so new.

But in the night, the werewolves crept

from the forest and devoured them as they slept.

To sleep again

I must return to sleep again,
where all was starlight-snow
falling soft upon velvet-moss,
where the air was filled
with the music of mint-roses
and the silver shadows melted
under a tattered organdy moon.
Our fingertips touched,
and the words we whispered
took flight as paper moths
and fluttered in the water-wind
that shimmered and shuddered as it flowed
towards the distant waves of hills
quietly crashing in the tender twilight.

The Lewis Carroll Scholar

One afternoon under golden sun,

I took a stroll through Regent Park

and, with the term of lectures done,

I stepped spry, feeling free as a lark.

I had in mind my leisure to take

and wandered down to Boating Lake.

At the water's edge upon the grass,

sat a well-dressed enchanting girl

who was reading Through the Looking-Glass

and I could see her brow begin to furl.

"Dear child," said I, "do you understand

what you are reading of Looking-Glass Land?"

She looked up towards me with a grin

and said, "I understand most every word

and the story is interesting, but then again

Alice's adventures seem quite absurd."

"Please," she continued with an eager look,

"explain, if you can, the meaning of this book."

And then I, being a tenured Oxford don

who had studied this author for thirty years,

straightened up tall like a true paragon

who is rightly admired by all his peers.

I opened my mouth to impart the teaching

for which this young girl was beseeching.

Yet the words I spoke were not what I intended

and they poured forth quite in spite of myself:

"Twas brillig, and the slithy wended

did gyre and gimble in the welf!"

At this, the immensity of my surprise

did not surpass the same in that girl's eyes.

Cygnus Sorrow

With such fair grace, the amber light

had filled the chalice-sky of spring

and touched the swan as she took wing,

departing in serene and stoic flight.

But why leave just as the warmer clime

had settled in and expelled the cold,

when all is a dazzle of green and gold,

a triumph over the wintertime?

Yet there she goes with graceful head

pointed towards the northern hills,

to pursue the lingering winter-chills

that from the joys of spring had fled.