What Not to Wear, in Verse

Incongruous

Jane commented on my socks.
I saw them as black,
she said one was gray
and other was black,
and that made them wrong.
I only saw the alternate toe design,
one with a white grid, the other without,
so I suppose that made them different.

But when I put my sneakers on and stood,
none of this mattered.
Just a small strip of black between
the top of my shoes and
the bottom of my jeans.
By then, Jane forgot about
my sartorial inelegance

as I slipped my plaid tweed jacket
over a striped shirt
and we walked out into the July sun.

Baseball from 4000 feet

My flight from Dallas to Philadelphia ended in a holding pattern over Philly, as the plane took three circles around northern Delaware and southern Pennsylvania, each one tighter than the other. The pilot even made a joke about it, calling it 'The Philly Factor".

We were fairly low, so I gazed out the window and took in the sights in the setting sun. This still feels incomplete...

Row 747, Upper Deck

At four thousand feet,
I search for baseball fields.
They will appear stamped into the landscape --
sometimes a pair at angles to each other
in a green neighborhood square,
sometimes a collection of brown diamonds
and connected green outfields
symmetrically placed near a building,
probably the school,
sprawled on the fringe of town.

But what I wish for
is that random trampled ground
marked out with four uneven scars for bases
and pitcher’s dirt torn in the middle of unmanicured grass --
where a flock of kids chase a white dot
while one boy tosses aside his toothpick of a bat
as he streaks down the thin brown path
and lands safely on first,
wheels down, far below.

Poetry Thursday -- on Saturday

Spring Explodes

As the bird sings,
the flower shivers;
and I ask if spring
would always arrive
as a blue-sky storm.

Poetry Thursday

I haven't checked out the Poetry Thursday site for this week's theme -- or any theme for a few weeks. But it is Thursday, so let's publish.

On the train to NYC, 7:30AM

The spring river reflects an early morning sky,
the calm air keeps the mirror clean;
a thin streak of white cloud
floats quietly from shore to shore.
The pale blue background is broken
only by ripples from a duck
painting her way across the wet canvass.
Bare trees create a row of inverted wet brushes
dipping their stiff bristles into the picture,
the roots of unblossomed lilies.

I throw a rock.