Microclimate

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--where I ride my bike into
a tunnel trains once burrowed through
that sunlight never warms,

where easy hazy summer drops
away and wintry dampness grips
my neck my back my arms,

and though I pedal faster,
still the end seems farther --
that's like the stretch between

the words I didn't think they'd hear,
the message that I didn't mean,
the look in their eyes angry, wary,

and

the way that they respond to
Sorry, I'm so sorry.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Though I've never arranged bouquets, I've seen others do with flowers what I did with a bundle of ideas when I started this poem. After my draft was posted, like the arrangers who step back to look at their work, I saw lines to be trimmed for clarity's sake, which revealed opportunities to relate ideas through rhyme, which led to rearrangements to achieve some pleasing symmetry. The poem looks and sounds very different on Saturday from what I posted Tuesday.
- WSS

Self Checkout

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You like the way
you heft your items
  CABERNET @ 2 for 5
from right to left
and deftly turn
  LB BRN RICE 1.19
to where a scanner reads
reflected laser beams between
  LHT RED KID 1.99
lines thick and thin
irregularly spaced

like, among thick winter days, this
sliver of warmth to ride your bike
where unobstructed sun through pines
makes lines on your road,
each bar you achieve
a part of coded miles
you leave behind:
  AWFL AWSM
opportunities ahead if
  ETRNTY
is similarly lined.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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The first time I noticed a bar code was on the cover of MAD magazine around 1970 when Alfred E. Neuman mowed it like grass. The bar code came to mind recently during a bike ride in late November; I saw possibilities for a poem when I realized that rhymes irregularly spaced might be analogous to bars in the code. Some actual receipts from Publix helped me out.

This is my first try at a technique that I associate with Billy Collins. His poems often begin with a whimsical or ordinary observation that develops to a point where a tangent thought takes the poem off to some very unexpected place. - WSS

Interview with Box Turtle

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Come out of the cold. You'll warm beneath my dome.
For sixty years, this room has been my home.

Want mushrooms? Snails? The rain I corked in spring?
Oh yes, in my field, I've now seen everything

from the stream to the oak on the ridge -- I recall when it fell --
the bike path I've crossed twice -- the traffic was hell.

The yoga mat's for tone. No, no more races.
My books; my sketches of beloved faces

all gone or gone beyond my own square mile.
I hope that they look back, as I do, and smile.

Here I work. Retired and alone,
I still seek ways to say what I have known:

We love, we hurt, we forgive, and we're forgiven.
My faith's not just a creed; it's a story I live in.

My pleasure. I didn't see how long we'd been.
It's good to stick my neck out now and then.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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See a photo of a box turtle on the bike trail with my blogpost Alone on Two Wheels Around Atlanta. I think of the box turtle as my spirit animal. - WSS

The Kingdom of Heaven is like

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a thousand hurtling tons
of iron, rubber, glass,
and biscuits with coffee to-go
stopped

to let a dude on skateboard
thread the stripes
across six lanes,
grinning.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Writing pages of drafts, I lost the fun of the original incident. I'd felt joy at some kind of miracle -- like Elisha crossing the river on dry land -- but in all those pages, I couldn't define it. This morning, I put all the notes aside and wrote this haiku-like sentence on the back of an envelope. - WSS