Origami Microchap

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Cover collage by Jan Keough

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Cicada

There are too many
late on a summer afternoon
when you need a nap,
and way too many in poetry—
a buzz saw signaling a lazy,
more contemplative moment.
Noteworthy are the first
and last cicadas of the year,
the one, clearly understood,
marking the beginning
of this most languid of seasons
while you sip your iced tea on the porch,
the dog asleep at your feet—
and the other, not known as the last
until later, if remembered at all.
But no cicada is as interesting
as your last summer’s last cicada—
the one making zzzzzz’s for eternity,
the one that makes the sleeping
dog’s ear twitch—just once.

Cigar Thinking

Five minutes into this cigar and
I am engaged in higher thinking—
winking in approval of myself,
sitting on this porch
before my many subjects,
answering all concerns and
suppositions with surprising
and measured insight and wit—
the decline of civility, the rise
of social media, the lack of
discipline in the matter of
parenting, the disturbing
influence of salt and trans-fats,
baggage fees and the tyranny
of the oil and insurance industries
as the squirrels and birds continue
feeding and gathering, scampering
and flitting about in approval.

Weight

What waits inside this poem
might be of any size or weight,
a thin shiny dime, for example,
or something thicker like a nickel,
but worth only half as much.
Love has weight, as does work,
and a conversation seen at a distance
might be feathers or cannon balls
tossed across the table.

My little sister and I would split
my father’s change. She took
the brown ones, bigger than
the dimes I sorted to myself,
and I often wonder since then
about my own weight and worth—
if I’ve spent myself wisely or kindly,
still in the black so to speak,
some change left in my pocket.

Painter of Light

In this painting, The Old Farmstead,
the rainbow arching over the hill
looks positively radioactive,
and the oaks and maples
around the house, the tidy bushes,
and even the grass seem lit from within,
as do, to a lesser extent,
the beatific sheep in the pen,
the smiling dog on the porch,
and the plump geese circling the pond
on a summer evening after rain.
One can imagine Granny knitting
behind the glowing windows,
cookies in the oven,
Grandpa’s ’52 Chevy out in the barn—
the Chevy that will come to us
one day if we are very good,
in the beloved The Old Farmstead.

Grief

You say
you cannot get another dog,
the inevitable heartbreak
too much to bear,
but the dog you do not get now
will die in time,
as will the one you do not get
after that,
your grief safely tucked away,
your heart unbroken
until it stops.

Eagle

In a stained and tattered coat,
maggots and beetles crawling
up his feathered trousers,
claws imbedded in venison,
the bald eagle is clearly annoyed—
an old man tearing at a carcass
in a heat wave of flies.
He gives me one rolling eye,
trying to enjoy a dinner in peace.
But here I am, a roadkill killjoy
in a truck, my camera pointed
at his banquet of rotting flesh

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Marsh Muirhead © 2023

Sounds of Water

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Cover photo by Jan Keough

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autumn rain

taps the fallen leaves

property taxes due

Acknowledgment: Bottle Rockets

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rising creek

the murmur of shifting rocks

in conversation

Acknowledgment: The Forest Haiku Path

at The Inn at Honey Run, Millersburg, Ohio

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Marsh Muirhead © 2019

what it lands on the sound of rain

Acknowledgment: Rattle

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the lake cracks

at thirty below

another sound of water

Acknowledgment: Modern Haiku

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Marsh Muirhead © 2019