The Late Romances

Have you no toys about your person

Fit to pass the end of life,
Making the darkness tolerable--
Little colored lights and chimes
And woofs and Squeaks A Toot. The zing
Companionable? Maybe a tale,
So often told it coughs at times
And smoothes all blankets. Cup-o-soup

And grown e comedies,
The tragedies of pith and pride,
Chronicled kings and ginger maids.
Bears turn to brothers, sweep the skulls
Into the pit, the old oak breathes,
Remembering when he was schooled
In naughty songbirds. Stuffed plush toys
With little lights inside their tums,
Though powered up by batteries,
Send harbor signals through the night.

Nighthood in the Neighborhood

The chickens came back, the beetles and the bears,

The pigs and the pronghorns, ready for the spring

That hopes eternal life is just a fad,

That fruit must be explained by leaves,  and buds

Will never fill their ponds in dustbowl days.

Some of the chickens felt bedraggled wings

Would not make them an asset; but the wolf,

Famous for fairness, said that wings were meant

For wagon trains and truck stops.  They all bunked

By Union River, watched the sky, and said

How pleasant it was that stars came out at night.