The house is gone where my halcyon days of childhood reigned
although garden is still intact behind the oleander hedge row
the umbrella pine that leaned so perilously has been long
removed; what was a fountain where I kept wild fishes
I caught in the canals is turned into a planter box
but the putti baby angel is still there holding
little dolphin aloft from which water
no more flows how strange to know
all those happy and sad times there
live on only inside my head
here we would camp out
in a tent in the backyard
sand and my estranged
brother was my closes
t friend reading me
Rudyard Kipling’s
Strange Ride
of Marobi Jukes
into the wee hours
of the night when cats
prowled on our back wall
and night birds called and hedge hogs
snuck about unseen while the distant hush
of the waves kissing the beach was never far
from mind; my two pet screech owls hunted
for rhino beetles around the street lights; where
did those nites disappear to, what archive stores
them collectively besides what resides somewhere
within the confines of my aging skull, where will they go
when I am dead, after I’ve whispered the name of my true love
from my dying lips to God’s ears as they lower me into the mother
earth to feed her hungry children, worms who also do His work and
never get a pay check or debts