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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Heat

I have not found a
praying mantis in the yard
this year.
Perhaps the heat is too much.
Lives are so dependent
on the weather.
The tilt of the planet.
The solar storms.

In this jewel box
where birds fly,
seasons gallop above us,
and the ground quakes
with lightning and storm.
The melodic centrifuge
of earth seldom completes
its songs,
leaving us tense and hungry.

So to look for what is past,
staring into the featureless face
of a bush,
for the praying pose of a mantis,
is the paradisiacal in me,
admonishing,
be gentle with your soul.

Published inIndex of all Poems