The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Category: Poetry

  • Under Snow

    Something there is wants the snow to stay
    keeping spring sprouts warm thru the night
    and day until we can begin again to grow
    in the sun’s majestic magnificent glow.

    Unlike the undertow of the riptide, under
    snow things stay in place and time stops
    the wind’s whips snap over our heads
    barely disturbing our sleep down below.

    My neighbor outside dressed in muffs
    shovels the snow off his cement ways
    while I awake but still under snow
    dare not disturb a single snow flake.

    There are gaps in my thoughts like
    missing teeth so I can’t take my ease
    like the retired rich man in Luke
    who does “eat, drink, and be merry.”

    I say to my soul stay under the snow
    it is a gift from a keen rich boss who
    knows in his other hand must throw
    suns of summer to heat green souls.

  • At Bay

    How to begin this sober day of play
    not to go down none subtle catastrophe
    words wander away, branch out from here
    blue curly birds may have places to rest.

    Ads at bay, nestled in floral concertina
    why can’t you be that guy
    who saves the day
    from grief and grinding gears

    from fears like ghosts with no roots
    little bugs that crawl and sneak into ears
    why can’t you understand
    we don’t need a plan

    we need a place to live in peaches
    round and soft and downy fur –
    who is talking now and to whom
    and to what end these words wind

    their way through the day as the snow melts
    and shows the same stuff still from yesterday
    the cover of the snow held such promise
    but its magic doesn’t stick here long

    and when the sun returns so it will
    we’ll have work to keep busy and full
    roads to finish out of these forests
    into clearings of Monet’s bright flowers.

    The light changes quickly always anew
    in the dark songs of what we see
    in the light tricks of what we worry
    about the dark in the light.

    Why can’t you be that guy
    who comes to save the day
    without words without song
    keeps his promise all night long.

  • Stopping by Windows on a Snowy Evening

    “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,”
    Frost’s buggy driver said to his horse.
    “Not if you have early to rise and drive
    come morning,” his mare replied.

    But at sunup all promises were freed,
    schools closed and happy kids slid
    down ripe soft hills on toboggans
    made of birch poles and risks.

    And from slick freeways of iciness
    commuters stuck eyed the homes
    warmly hidden in the village hills
    and the road winds were not easy.

    Horse sense got lost when Ford
    put Frost and mare out of business,
    who now stop by wood windows
    within to view the snow without.


  • Still Bird

    Still from the sill the cat peers
    windowed in at the flightless
    bird atop the grape pergola.

    The cat flies through the night
    but this bird won’t spread wings
    not that we’ve ever seen.

    Patient the bird still sits until
    asked to fill out a form with pen
    questions on feathers and hymns

    and such: are you a sole
    bird? how high do you fly?
    are you a kind bird? what kind?

    In what direction points
    your beak when at odds
    with others you yearn

    for the sea and sing
    a single note of myst
    a story that obscures

    your spurt in a torment
    a torrent of thickel
    breathfull agog gast?

  • Heart-Shaped

    A dust of snow this Valentine’s Day
    not much just a sprinkle of sugar
    on roofs and grass of sweetmeats
    the street’s clear to come and go
    social love miserly virtual treats
    turns sour at the corner ignored
    relics of one’s love in framed pics.

    Lost love seems now the sweetest
    tooth in the mouth of memory when
    to bite yearningly brings back pain
    without which tho there is nothing
    for the heart in its card to hark back
    to not words nor images nor nights
    at sea dressed in red sky vapor trails.

    Words last not last night’s telling
    as we amble toward a late spring
    watching the squirrels and crows
    from icy windows and Scamble and
    Cramble the cats come to smell
    and scratch in the familiar places
    looking for a facial comfort zone.

    But in safe and ease we may feel
    nothing better to go in the cold
    grab a nip and feel the wet bit
    scrunch of the lips in the dark
    alley tongue out the back door
    of your ground floor apartment
    upstairs we would not gambol.

    Love’s crisis longs for a headline
    an ocean in which to clown one’s
    cartoon visions under a laughing
    audience of unidentified balloons
    aloft the shape and size of hearts
    made of flour and sugar and red
    paint and salt water taffy.

    Oh to have & hold a heart a late
    night very red strawberry fruit
    hugs with no words drawings
    seen from our wintry limbs
    high up in our trees we climb
    to enjoy one another’s going
    easy and around and around.

  • A Poetry of Oddity

    Collected in poems whats
    decorative which is odd
    a sad iron pressed against
    her forehead happy hands
    waving goodbye to white
    wrinkled blouses the lacy
    lazy lives long now lost.

    Sad too the turtle backs
    stacked in a bowl as if
    for a crab feed bottles
    of quality wine carried
    home in a grocery cart.

    Ages and ages hence
    consigned to collections
    of periodicals we used
    to play bingo at church
    prayed to Jesus a good
    card to win the catch.

    Portrait of a lady
    sitting beneath
    a covey of chandeliers
    her antique back
    stiff and brittle with age.

    The skeleton
    of a barber chair
    a retired fisherman
    walking along a quay
    a homemade boat
    in the distance.

    And in the rooms
    above the shops
    full of Chantilly lace
    champaign and chagrin
    we pause and pose
    hoping to be collected
    and not thrown out
    as odd as we be old.


  • Cold Car

    Early still dark and the cat is up
    a cup of coffee before commute
    past a golden sun in woods lost
    to old Firestones rubber cairns.

    Commutes are like short stories
    back out, turn around, take off
    reach the corner slow stop turn
    right down the hill to the light.

    The hills loom typographically
    a bold outline of italicized firs
    at an intersection of squirrels
    and owls a tree older than any

    house on the block remembers
    not who lived where but winds
    and howls rains and scorching
    sun a few children on swings.

    Houses last longer than cars
    trees longer than houses the
    old man recalls his home his
    cars and the tree he planted

    in his front yard a year prior
    to the war and it lived to see
    the freeway come through
    odd name that, he said,

    no one on it ever seemed free
    especially if you missed your
    offramp had to go another
    mile or two get off back on.

    One picks a car like a font
    default curlicue bumpers
    and chrome strips along
    the doors inside the bowl

    cold in the counter stroke
    as one enters the aperture
    the temperature there not
    quite human in spite of the

    comfort compared to the horse
    drawn buggy or the old man
    with a staff stumbling toward
    town his rucksack full of acorns.

  • Me and Midnight

    I talk to myself
    I’ve not much to say
    I talk to myself
    just like to say hey.

    I talk to myself
    and oh by the way
    I put in a good
    word for you.

    When I’m out on the road behind the wheel
    I talk to myself and away I peel
    When standing in line at the DMV
    I talk to myself as if I believed.

    All around town as I walk down the street
    I talk to myself as I meet and greet
    After midnight and I’m awake in bed
    I talk to myself in the back of my head.

    Midnight is my cat a Persian Blue
    she hangs out late shooting pool
    down on the corner she curls the poles
    finally comes home up the back ladder
    looking for a hot cup of black coffee.

    Midnight drinks coffee all night long
    plays guitar and sings nine minute songs
    If you’ve never seen a cat play and sing
    come on up my back stoop after midnight.

    And while Midnight plays guitar and sings
    her songs I talk to myself all night long
    I’ve not much to say but hey I say
    I talk to myself and satisfy the blues.

  • Satisfaction

    Alas he finally got some a little and
    at one with his time felt disappointed
    he figured retirement would go his way
    but life in the caboose proved irksome.

    Around and around the world he drove
    autos to his amazement in every place
    boasted the same old rusty boulders
    stones stacked to museum glass ceilings.

    He no longer caroused and flipped
    if he cared who smoked what when
    tipped the valet a fin with a sly grin
    as if he knew all about satisfactions.

    One could now stream a losing streak
    but the barrage of boredom wore down
    the best of them and he parked the car
    and whistling a happy tune walked home

    satisfied to be out of his head over you
    out of his head over you
    out of his head over you
    out of his head.

  • Before the Mast

    I am all wet
    wet is what I do to you
    with blue and green oils
    I fill your valley and canyon
    play host to millions of minions
    swamp your mountain up
    to it its bald peak cooling
    your outrages.

    I am atmospheric host
    to my children who swim
    on my skin and burrow
    deep below
    when one leaves
    I cry.

    I rise up
    and hug the dry bones
    and slide away.

    I bay and bawl but
    I’m not angry but I yowl
    and roar and spit
    up splash into the sky
    drown your bounced boats
    I am wet noise.

    I know when you come near
    and when you go in
    as you say
    I spread my molecules
    and envelop you.

    You dive down in me
    your bloated body floating
    cured with salt
    draped in seaweed
    and that silly snorkel
    you look just like
    another funny fish.

    I am mostly all body
    a bowl of jelly
    I won’t lie still
    I love my sailing curves.

    You can’t walk on me
    you talk over me
    all your rocks sink
    I answer only to the moon.

  • A Tree Thinks Knot

    A tree thinks knot
    like we think kneel.
    Falling leaf sneeze
    and the old oak hip

    turns in the midnight
    breeze below zero
    lights out beneath
    full down comforter.

    We hurly-burly reach
    out akimbo with hug
    be underground root
    dew moist sensation.

    The tree sheds sorrow
    and we take a shit
    no shave no shower
    ready for near wind

    ’twill blow us off face
    of our ease no stress
    as we paddle out
    absurdly, wildly.

    Out about and look back
    the trees up on the beach
    waving hysterically our
    free roots touching salt.