Stephen Hawking

I think of Stephen Hawking
sitting in his wheel chair
his atrophied body

slumped to one side
looking out at the world
through a vacant stare

but looking more deeply
into his eyes
I see he isn't really there

he's parsecs away
riding a photon
through a new galaxy

singing e=mc squared
listening to music
only he can hear

The Balooga Bird's Song

If you’ve lain awake
In the middle of the night,
An hour before daybreak

To be precise -
You may have heard
the Balooga Bird.

It's incredibly small -
Just half an inch tall
And because it is such

A diminutive thing
It can barely sing
Above a soft hush

So it waits until
The day disappears
And the night goes still

And if it's small ears
Hear the faintest sound
Like a leaf falling down

Or an owl’s low hoot
It will stop and go mute
But if all is just right

It will sing in the night
And release from its throat
The three sweetest notes

You ever will hear
So pure and so clear
So full of delight

They'll repeat in your ear
For the rest of your life

Crocuses

by jr paruolo
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"Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light." - Theodore Roethke
______________________________________

The crocuses will appear again this year
just as they do every year - suddenly,
unexpectedly, cloistered among the exposed
rheumatoid roots of the ancient beech trees
that line the roadside edge of an abandoned estate
on the back road I take home each evening

For the greater part of the year
they exist in subterranean darkness,
meditating patiently beneath the ground -
like little Buddhas
Waiting to burst out of their bulbs
and expose their purple petaled flowers in prayer
at the appropriate time

And when I finally come upon them in bloom-
I am filled with the desire to stop
and lean against the decaying split rail fence
that separates them from the road
to quietly meditate for a while -
and enjoy this temporary
but beautiful oasis
set against a landscape of winter stasis

But Time says -No,
you have other places to go -

So, I continue on,
driving slowly,
for the next few miles -
trying to retain that imagery
permanently in memory-
telling myself I will stop the next time
But I never do

In a week or so they are gone -
And taking no time to mourn their loss
Nature begins her task
of rebuilding the world from scratch:
one flower,
one blade of grass,
one clutching vine at a time -
until this small patch of property
becomes just another ordinary way-point
of competing green foliage
along the roadside on the way home