plant lady

We don't have pets in our house

But we have many plants being cared for

Thanks to you the plant lady who lives with me

Every window gives its light to living greenery.

There are some 35 pots with growing flora

At last count I took walking from room to room

Taking inventory taking a minute to admire it all

This wonderful conservatory you have created.

I remember how your eyes opened wide

When first you saw all the windows in this house

Imagining the possibilities for happy plants here

Responding to your expert skillful nurturing.

Outside there are more plants on all sides

And a rock garden to tend that's exposed to the nibblers

The deer and rabbits and chipmunks munch away

Enjoying the salad we provide like it or not.

These animals have adopted us in a way

Being quite the cute rascals eating our produce

But the visitors we want to attract fly in and out

Coming to partake of our seed and suet and thistle.

You do all the work of watering the plants every week

And refilling the bird feeders almost every day

Letting me be a freeloader getting all the benefit

Leaving me to thank you for all that you do.

Ryker Lake June 6, 2019

album

Great Swamp June 2, 2019

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engendered identity

Not like a child knowing nothing of adult urges

Not like a youth swept along in a flood of desires

Being older with decades of past experiences

I welcome all the variations of gender in our world.

I see the blend of female and male forms in each of us

Unique combinations all different and beautiful

Seen at a distance perhaps as an ambiguous shape

Our age and gender identity suggested in our outline.

I was born into a binary construct that confused me

Responding to people young and old as individuals

Each with the potential to laugh and play games

Without regard to divergent pronouns attached to them.

I was a naive teenager reading James Baldwin

Understanding only that his characters felt love

And my favorite poet Jack Spicer touched me

Without my knowing about his sexual orientation.

As it should be, I suppose, in a closeted time

Baldwin crying out to Go Tell It On The Mountain

Spicer's poetry infused with love and hidden meanings

Before the struggle for gay rights broke through.

How much better for children and adults today

Than for me as a boy hearing my father’s homophobic slurs  

He who sat speechless watching Alan Turing in "The Enigma"

When I took him to Broadway many years later.

Modern love does not compel human procreation

Freeing us to embrace everyone with open arms

Though the forces of reaction would take us back

The right to be ourselves will surely prevail.