FOREST HILLS
Our neighborhood is changing rapidly
As modest old frame houses are torn down,
Lots leveled, cleared of every bush and tree
To be a crenelated mansion’s ground.
The nouveau riche have found our ponds and lakes,
Our rolling hills and streets of ancient brick
A setting that the best impression makes,
Especially if one’s a former hick.
At least we have no crenelated walls
To keep the hoi poloi from coming through,
And plenty of old trees from which bird calls
impartially delight both me and you.
And our Lake Sue is open to all sorts
As kind with kind delightfully consorts.
*
SERENDIPITY
To write a sonnet, Serendipity
Is the true Muse to piously invoke
For meter to match matter properly
And travel easily under one yoke.
You cannot know ahead when you start out
Where the exigencies of beat and rhyme
Will ultimately show what it’s about
As it emerges from the deep Sublime;
Therefore, to write a sonnet is to play
A game of hazards, hoping for good luck
And that from all our language’s array
Of rhymes, we’ll have the skillfulness to pluck
Exactly what we need for the right place
To make the sonnet end with style and grace.
*
STREET TREATS
Our nosegator Gyp inhales the news
As on our daily walks she scours the streets;
While Tig and I are mainly after views,
Our Gypsy’s hunting savory, crunchy treats—
Bones of chicken legs that workers toss
From their truck windows into curbside leaves,
Now mingled with the fallen Spanish moss:
This surely is the worst of my pet peeves,
For suddenly I hear a crack and crunch
When Gyp, who’s snuffling curbside debris,
Exhumes a bone and nabs it for her lunch,
Defying me to try to pry it free,
Which, now and then, I’m lucky to have done,
Risking a bite, but mainly Gypsy’s won.
BELIEVURE
Believure is behavior driven by
Convictions, not by well-established facts
And rational proceedings wherein lie
Assurance of the rightness of our acts.
Believeure is the cause of many errors
And some with catastrophic consequence
Affecting often innocent wayfarers,
The victims of wayward experiments.
The proper way is to let science rule,
Proceeding cautiously by reason’s guides;
Irrational belief will lead a fool
To where his fantasy with truth collides.
Belief may serve when truth cannot be known,
But you’ll be living in a twilight zone.
*
LIFE
Oh, yes, I have no doubt there’s life out there
Through the far reaches of the galaxy;
I grant, apt circumstances would be rare,
But think: we’re looking at infinity.
Or if not literally, then extend the view
To the whole cosmos—galaxies galore:
What brought us into being can’t be new
And must have happened elsewhere long before.
It’s simply the impossibility
Of probing into distances so vast,
Extending toward infinity,
That leaves our curiosity aghast.
Our duty though’s to tend to life right here,
Too precious to allow to disappear.
*
