Ten thousand flamingoes crowd the wadi
would you feel less guilty if there were none?
remove your watch and set it by your bed
begin each day with clean mouth and elan
Neruda faced the world and wrote the ode
your poem is not a card trick to bamboozle
sensory overload dazzle fluff, Reno style
shrimp like gear teeth round communal bowls
beside the fireplace where you hung the saber
Myanmar cyclone aftermath, pass the ribs
every day there's too much information, prod
to action prod to prod until shock's the point
action's gangliar echo severed from aim
and once more into the breech my friends
is only worth a dozen points on the GRE.


---

Rhododendron buds like a finial display at Lowe's
some look like a hand holding playing cards and
the one on the highest limb looks a little like Chita
Rivera. Everyone's yard is filled with white and
lilac lilacs, blue bells, red and yellow tulips, that
mad color splash that is Seattle Spring. Bert's has
zonal geraniums, flat after flat, along with
azaleas. Mothers Day hung hot pink ballgowned
fuchsias, white lobelia earlobes dainty between
the dresses. I weed in my daughter's fleece pants.

---

Remember in January all that you swore off?
Cookie dough, cocaine, whatever it was
you were serious but it would get easier --
winter dark and cold overwhelmed by light
and warmth when we feel easier in our skin,
my pronouns all over the map, but you know
what I mean.
--

I'm out of joint and grumpy, not asked to participate at Skagit River this year, sent two emails and nobody replied. Called and nobody called back. Wah! I know they struggle for money to fund their project, and I know other things - my email provider decided to upgrade our service and left us without email for several days then went back to the original email format, I was out of town two weeks in February. Out of country. In Southwest India. WAAAAAH! So anyways, poor me.

--

A lemon just flew by. Lemon colored but it was a bird. Black on the wings. It was a male goldfinch, I just looked it up. In its mating colors. They molt in the fall, then again in spring to get the dandelion yellow plummage I'd chase after if I were a drab olive colored female goldfinch.

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