The Dumb Arranger

Understand, it takes a wholly powerful
creative arranger to force moons, planets,
and stars in orderly ways that can’t be known
to clerics meditating in bamboo huts,

tending mosquito-constraining smudge fires.
Understand, an intelligent arranger
devised the elaborate scheme of
molecules and proteins that defy chance

formation, the DNA, the RNA. Understand,
the arranger designed me, with one tube
in my throat to eat, breathe and talk,
when it’s plugged I can’t eat or breathe,

or tell anyone what the trouble is.
I have one nose for smelling that’s shut down
by one cranky sinus. Understand, dumb design
can’t be explained by chance, necessity.

Settled

Bark-shedding logs ride a truck
screaming north while another
load rumbles south.

Logs crisscross dirt roads
and highways, aimlessly drifting
back and forth like gulls

in the harbor looking for a landing,
a barge to ride across the bay,
a feeding flock, space on a log boom.

Like a gull I ramble
up and down the beach,
looking for space on a log.

Gulls drift over the ocean
where rivers go to die.

Private Dinner

for Totally Optional Prompts

I'm having a small group for dinner,
you should come too,
I'll have a stylish pianist, be there at seven,
and be sure to bring your well-endowed Karen.

Shadows are on the house, in the library
Stylish-Jessie plays Haydn's Twenty Variations
for twenty minutes, which covers the sound of feet
pattering back and forth upstairs.

Then twenty minutes of Theme and Variations
to distract a private audience
from the swish and clatter, latches,
doors and windows. On Haydn's final notes

Stylish begins to calm, politely receives acclaim,
politely leaves with shadows in her car,
politely takes her cut. I contend
with the insurance, invite a small group

to bid on originals, be sure
to bring your well-endowed Karen.

I invite Stylish for a tete-a-tete.

Stock Market

The stock market bends back and forth
like the weather, weak winds drift
between hot and cold
while we fish shallow waters.

Afternoon clouds build to thunder columns,
swirling winds, lightening tails,
it’s fun to see but not to suffer.
I unload my investment and watch

a thin moon rise, watch fog gather
in the meadow, listen for crows.