Bunny Slippers

 

My slippers don’t actually

have bunny ears on them

but they’re more than twelve

years old, a ripe old age

for a house rabbit or slippers.

They’ve survived twelve

funerals of nine family 

members and three dear

friends. They’ve stayed 

in Thailand, Korea, France

and the Grand Canyon,

camped in the Poconos,

moved house up and down 

the east coast from Florida

to Upstate New York,

Connecticut, New Jersey,

North Carolina, forth 

and back to France--all

told, twenty-four moves

or two times twelve. When

they first covered my feet, 

not one of the nine kinfolk 

were ailing. I never imagined 

them dying or going 

to Thailand. Similar to how

bunnies don’t imagine 

wearing slippers.

photo: bunnies, Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas (Russian Orthodox Cathedral), Nice

Waiting for Patience to Arrive

 

Irritated, standing shoreside of that peaceful pond

at the edge of the meadow, its green stagnant

scum passive until Basho’s frog

plops through the surface and leaves

a couple of bubbles at the center of brand-new

concentric circles whose arcs ripple toward me

--an inciting event, cue sunbeam, then squirrel

to scramble amidst underbrush like a distracted 

old man with dementia scattering junk mail

by the foyer, fidgeting through his sock drawer

and then the freezer wondering where the keys 

to the door he can’t find have gone.

~ pcm

         2021-04-17

photo: 2020-04-14, Carrboro