For Ivy Annalise

 

 

Here we sit

sorting our lives

like the daily mail,

measuring our progress

by old photographs,

judging our worth

by unseen gain.

 

Then here you come

waited, wanted, already loved,

beautiful and perfect in your own right,

and more important than any

unseen, unfelt, unwritten belief.

 

That you are here,

that you are ours,

that you are loved,

forever now,

no matter.


 

The Woodpecker

 

The woodpecker brash and brawny

plans his attack on the cat food,

darting up and down and in and out,

snatching at the morsels

like avian ambrosia.

 

Red-hooded, white-throated, bodkin-beaked,

he flings his chirruping song into the air all around him.

 

How like him we are,

perpetually darting,

snatching at shards of bliss,

grasping, clutching, grabbing,

as the slivers slip ceaselessly from our hands.