Insights

A pond; a frog A resting pond Disturbed By a breeze, A leaf falls Breaks the stillness The movement of its spindly veins Mimicking a water spider at rest Mistaking it for food, A minnow darts after the leaf Breaking the water’s surface I long to be a frog in a pond Half-submerged at the water’s edge With no thoughts of life or death, No questions of morality or ethics No urgent calls for action, Feeling the warm sun And the cooling shadows Rippling across my back Waiting for the Sun This is a real winter’s day Cold, dry, stiff, unforgiving I scan the horizon Searching for some light Today I stand with the tree across the street The one whose limbs Are outstretched to greet the sun All I can see is a distant glimmer A small light trying to burn its way through A thatched-worked maze of brittle branches The snow laden fog has settled in We await a burst which never arrives A Captive Bird A small bird resides in my right hand It seeks refuge in the meaty pad of my palm It greets the sunrise with warbling and trills And a gentle flutter of fingertips As its wings stretch in preparation for the day The bird seeks unencumbered flight Crushed wings wobble to the left Then veer right, Pounding the perimeters of the flesh, They trace large elliptical orbits, Slip into a freefall dive Then pulse erratically to outwit time. Overtaken by fatigue, The beating finally subsides, As the unrelenting creature drops into a shallow sleep. In the morning I awaken To a flutter in my left hand