The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: cliche

  • Twenty Love Poems: 3

    One hears the old saw men
    want only one thing but
    if one may want a thing one
    might as well want more
    than one than one of that
    thing men want but one
    and more of that one over
    and over again once more.

    Then too why all this business
    of all the eggs in one basket
    when one’s father realized
    two are living together sans
    anyone’s blessing two alone
    remarked with the old saw
    why buy the cow why when
    one’s getting the milk free.

    And what did he wonder
    about his cow apparently
    now on the open market
    and he calls his girl a cow
    as if one could afford
    to buy one a whole cow
    comes sans dowry
    save existential wave.

    Love is a many splintered
    thing like the tiny wood
    jackstraw one can’t get
    out with a fine tweezer
    that sliver of sharp glass
    entirely incapacitates
    one’s grip on life and love
    and the cow moos like a saw.

  • on water

    he walked under
    paid & unemployed
    among rocks
    and whirlpools
    between antiquity
    and the gift of now
    of uncertainty
    treading water
    waiting for his own
    antiquity to come
    when someone might
    remember he walked
    on water treading
    trudged and carried
    no grudge.

  • The Anglers

    They line the streets, sitting out at sidewalk cafes, watching the passersby, angling for what they might catch. Patiently they wait, nursing a coffee through a first frost morning, almost napping off over a warm afternoon beer, coming back in the evening for a smooth glass of purple pinot noir or a shot of postprandial espresso. The burbling, gurgling, murmuring river of cars drifts along, punctuated by busses and trucks, bicycles, pedestrians crossing, a cop on a Harley, a delivery truck snagged on a rock, three buskers in an open boat. The anglers move along too, changing spots, carrying their birdcages of verbs, baskets of nouns, hooks and swivels and spinners tucked in their tackle box notebooks. And I move upriver, looking for a new hole, so hungry I will not catch and release a cliche, but will pick out its bones and pan-fry the fillet in butterfat in a cast iron skillet.

  • Of Cliche and Sadness

    What can be said of cliche that has not been said? Sadness, too, floods the sensorium. Snorkeling along face underwater, sadness cannot talk, and hears only its own sorrowful breath. Cliche will sleep deep and wait out winter and will rise up again come spring, already gone to seed before the yellow narcissus awakes.