Train Whistle
Lying in bed
I hear the long lonely sound of a train's whistle.
   And though it makes me feel isolated and alone,
        the sound also gives me
an unexplainable connectedness to places
unseen and unknown.

Parade
The hawk
   remained by the side of the road
      keeping watch over its kill
as Jeanine and I approached in our gold Le Sabre.
He kept his eyes alert
   as with every crunch of the tires we got closer.
When we were stopped
   not five feet from him
      I could see my image reflected in his eyes.
And still he stood at attention,
    watching as we drove away,
       the last float of a boring parade.

Childhood Lessons
Bozo the Clown
was interrupted
by Walter Cronkite:
      The President is dead.
My classmates and I
were eight years old
and soon to understand that
        childhood doesn't last forever.
Less than five years later,
after a night of swimming at
the YMCA with fellow
Boy Scouts
I learned that a
bigot with a gun could
         kill a Dreamer
                (but not his dream).
And then just scant weeks later,
on a Saturday morning,
instead of watching cartoons
I would hear endlessly
"Now lets go on to
Chicago and win there"
only to see
replays of confusion
and shots fired
in a kitchen
and learn that
Rosie Greer had a
life after football.
In 1968
"Tricky Dick" Nixon
won election as president
and became an exemplar of
the importance of peristenace
before,
in 1974,
becoming a pestilance
due to the 
Watergate Hearings
that revealed him to
have plumbers on his payroll
and paranoia
in his mind.
Leading to one
final lesson:
no one,
not even a president,
is above the law.

Wobbly King of a Very Small Hill
A brown and white calf
stood atop
the remains of a hay bale
on wobbly legs
hoping that a wisp
of wind didn't send it sprawling

Snow Day
I cannot help
    but look out on new snow
        with memories and dread and wistfulness.
Memories of a childhood
     of swooshing down hills,
         around curves
            and under fences
                   on a Flexible Flyer
followed by warming cups of hot chocolate
      and conversations reliving it all.
Today
    snow brings dread
       of slippery roads
            and other drivers
who may not apply their brakes
   soon enough to avoid me.
But mostly snow in the driveway
    along streets and hills
makes me wish I were 10 again
   not yet worried about idiots in cars.

A winter poem

Snow Designs
No
two
are
alike
on
windows,
just
as
no
two
snow
flakes
are.

Snow Storm

Snow Storm

Beneath the bird feeder

           A white throated sparrow

                    hunkers down.

                            Protected by a large stone

               juncos hop over her

                   seeking sunflower seeds before they are hidden beneath snow.

Meanwhile, cattle and horses,

        covered by snow blankets,

              lazily munch on round hay bale remnants.