LIMERICK GIBBERISH        

I think that it might have been Jim or Rick
Who scrawled a nonsensical limerick
Spending so little time
On its rhythm and rhyme
But he managed to stick in a fifth line anyway.

AMAZING DISCOVERY

Moonbeams and stars!
     Diagonal bars!
Circles of teardrops
     and apple-pie wedges!
Dinosaur teeth
     with grooves underneath
And a zig-zag of seagulls
     in flight at the edges.

We saw ovals and rings
     and squiggly things,
Some watchamacallits
     and diamonds and squares,
A half-dozen hexagons,
     oodles of octagons,
waffles and shamrocks
     in columns and pairs.

We thought it was neat
     to walk down the street
As we headed home backwards
    all in a row,
And that's when we found
     those designs on the ground -
Engraved by our boots
in the sparkling snow.

COMPUTER CHIP LIMERICK

I hereby revere and salute
the computer chip, rather minute,
for it keeps all my data
devoid of errata,
and easy to find when I boot.

GRAM'S PILLS

She winked and called them life-savers
and I stacked them all in piles.
Swaying castles. Tilting towers.
Wavy lines of railway cars
in the valleys of her quilt.
Gram would let me do it.
Long pink pills
and tiny shiny yellow ones,
brown pills, round and rubbery,
and blues and whites and greens.
My favorites were the plastic ones
that look like see-through bullets
filled with tiny coloured beads.
Some helped her breathe, she once explained,
while others dulled the pain
that grabbed her wrists and shook her
from a night of gentle dreams.
I often wondered how the pills
knew how to find their way
to fix her aching heart,
her knotted veins,
and wrinkled hands,
and hidden stuff
all jumbled up inside her
like broken old machines.
Today the pills stopped working —
Grams' pills had let her down.
Now Gram can't greet her visitors
who creak across the floor
or reach to wipe their tears away
or hear their muffled whispers.
Gram can’t hear the squawking gulls,
the hum of passing cars,
or children jumping rope outside,
or sparrows in her garden.
I watched them flush her pills way —
those useless bits of colour
Through stinging tears I saw them swirl,
like memories of a rainbow
twisting in a whirlpool
to slowly disappear.

GRANDPA'S SECRET

Grandpa grew hair
on his knuckles and toes,
some tufts in his ears,
and some right up his nose.
His bushy white moustache
tickles my cheeks,
and it dances a jig
every time that he speaks.
His eyebrows stick out
in a jumble of bristles,
his cheeks feel so scratchy,
like thorns or like thistles.
There's soft, curly hair
on his arms and his chest,
and he might have lots more,
but his clothes hide the rest.
He told me a secret ...
here's what he said -
I'd trade all this in
for some hair on my head!

ANDY'S FOOD ADVENTURE

When Andy ate spaghetti -
he mooshed it in his hair,
and the long squishy noodles
did a tumble here and there.
They slinked off his ears
and slithered off his nose,
and dangled from his shoulders
and his knees
and his toes.
With tomato-sauce fingers
Andy painted on his chair
He drew a giant circle,
and some squiggles
and a square.
Then he crunched up a cracker
with his fingers and his thumbs
'til all that he had left
were a thousand little crumbs
Andy's dinner ended
with some berries for dessert
that dribbled off his chin,
leaving spatters on his shirt.
Then Daddy got him ready,
and sat him in the tub
for a sudsy little soak
and a hardy scrub-a-dub.
Now he's wrapped in a towel
looking spotlessly clean -
but everything he touched
is in the washing machine!

POETIC LICENSE

A poet whose life was perverse
had his days and his nights in reverse
He awoke every night
with a yearning to write
Thus going from bed .... to verse!

SPARROW ESCAPE

Tiny brown sparrows
perch in a row
on an overhead wire
and look down below
to a tangle of traffic
of buses and vans,
big transport trailers
and sporty sedans,
with engines a-whirling
and grinding of gears.
Their fumes reach the sparrows
to fill them with tears.
Tiny brown sparrows
rise with a flutter
escaping the noise,
the smoke and the clutter.
They flee from the city
to corn fields and trees,
through marshes and meadows,
in a wildflower breeze.
Tiny brown sparrows,
How chipper and spry!
Lucky brown sparrows
can rise up and fly.

THE DANCE I'D NEVER SEEN

I loved
when your grandfather
came out to dance -
stepping each foot twice
to the beating of the drum -
soft leather moccasins
digging in the dust,
fringes, like the sweet grass
whipping in the wind.
Shaded by the evergreen,
the drummer-men sat,
and pounded hollow thunder
that echoed through the wood.
A chant ripped the air
like the talon of a hawk -
a clear voice - a calling voice
of sadness and of joy.
It softened as the circle grew
with Moms and Grandmas
brightly clad
in dresses of a thousand bells
and silky fringes trembling.
Beads of black and greeny-blue
jingled with each twirling step.
Swinging braids.
Waving feathers.
Shades of early fall.
Children danced in celebration -
soared and swooped
like wolves
and eagles.
Soon I felt the rhythm
of the dance I'd never seen.
As daylight turned to purple haze
the drumbeat drew me in at last.
Shameless now,
I stepped in time
with you
and Silver Cloud -
whirling, reeling,
dipping, arching,
heart-beat charged with
booming drums,
while night-time breezes
rippled my imaginary feathers.