Galveston

I remember your wind blown face. The wooden dock, weather worn by many years of salten sea, sometimes the wild surf lapping over the pier.  It was gray with misty rain.  The smell of baked red snapper mingled with sunbaked intestines and fisheries.

And in my dream there you are my darling-one to rush together in happiness, the embrace, we kiss for the first time and I melt in the blowing rain. 

My heart is broken now.

When I was eight, I saw the ocean for the first time. I never knew before what big truly was--seaweed at my feet, the primal pull.  Watch that undertow my Mother said.  What’s that clinging to the seaweed?  Oil from the ships, mama winced...careless ships.

I came down with double pneumonia that time and after that, asthma ensued for many years. Emotional, the doctor said, a botched circumcision done too early.

And later on at fifteen, I was there for music.  Our group of boys exploring the beach and piers one night entranced by African rhythms from the wild black man making twenty gallon oil drums come alive.

Time has never been the same.

And today, the projectile black vomit of Gaia blood, mile-down volcano of spewing darkness and death comes to all.  

So,  all the fishermen, shrimp boats, oyster-lover’s restaurants, bells clinging on waves of black tar, stench of diesel cloak and rust of old despairing ships drown in the sea of tar.  Like sabre tooth cats and mastodons wallowing in terror through thick black ink, the sucking doom of our greed.  Storks and pelicans and gulls cry across the gulf and, on the wind,  whalesong shrieks into the night.

Goodbye my happy dolphin.

Woodchuck Buffalo

Woodchuck stood at the edge of porch,
two feet tall and grinning,
finishing off my kale.

"Ohh, my beautiful salad," I groaned.  "Couldn't you munch the dandelions instead?  Must I whack you one to get through?"

Woodchuck smiled a toothy and spoke with British accent, "you are a Buddhist, it is said."

With my jaw agape and eyes like dinner plates, I stuttered, "uh...uh...cou...could we make a deal?"

Woodchuck closed his eyes for a moment of quiet contemplation,  pearly whites still agleam.

"Uh...uh..." I breathed, my heart pounding like a jackhammer.

Finally, Woodchuck opened one eye and then the other, vectoring into my soul like a royal laser, "ok geezer, here's the deal...I eat anything and everything...and...you get nothingness."

I stumbled backwards to avoid falling down and gasped, "uh...uh...okay."