If I Were Ancient And A Sage \ Game

Nancy:  Waking at night with a poem only to find in the morning that the rock has dried, the wind has blown, the poem flown.

If I Were Ancient And A Sage

I might write poems on stones

and walk away.

I might tie poems to branches

as if they were leaves.

I might write poems on paper

for children to fly like kites.

I might write poems with water

on my doorstep.

I might write poems

in wine dregs, and forget them.

The tide would swallow them.

The frost would trick them into falling.

The children would break the strings.

Wind would dry the doorstep.

Two empty cups by the fireside,

wine spilled, sages dreaming.

Or I might write a poem and give it to you.

It might be a live coal,

or paper for wrapping fish, would you know?

If it turned to a bird in your hand,

would you let it fly?

Alan:  There are those who buy a hunting license every year, whether or not they get their deer (or bear, or what-have-you).  And there are those who take what they can, when they can, fair game or not.

Game

It’s Sunday, and nothing’s in season.

Sunday, when state law still declares a day of rest

for game.

It’s the time of year bears stagger, blinking and starving,

from their dens with cubs,

when foxes, bobcats, coyotes are nursing young

and deer are desperate for green.

Two quick shots, squeezed off in the puckerbrush back over the ridge.

Two quick shots, out of sight in the woods.

Maybe that’s what the baying of dogs was, earlier.

No one’s sighting in their gun, pinging a few bottles

with two quick shots.

It’s Sunday, a good day

to kill something, and

everything’s in season.