Haiku for the Allen Memorial Art Museum whose works were at least as inspiring as the birds, especially Liu Bolin hiding at the Sawmill.

Art Museum birds
flap futile resistance to
Oberlin's spring chill.




Number one of 100 haiku in which the author utilizes the line "We were children then" for dramatic effect.

Shoulder high dry grass
where the twin theater stood.
We were children then.

An Officer and a Gentleman

My wife is in our room on the computer.
The cats are there too.

My son is in the living room
playing video games with a friend of his.

I'm hiding out in the basement
drinking a beer and writing this

surrounded by old coats
and boxes of things I have forgotten.

It's cold outside.
I got nowhere else to go.

Entitlement Programs

I saw them first in the soup aisle,
an old Italian couple leaning in
to discuss chicken dumpling
with thick immigrant accents.
Her hair was thinning, but
in a perfect evolutionary coincidence
his back was so stooped he couldn't see.
He placed his spotted hand
on her forearm and smiled.
She placed the soup in their cart.

I saw them again in the checkout
as they waited awkwardly
for the manager to verify
their government assistance,
before paying the two dollars
and a few odd cents difference.
They drew woolen collars tight
against their necks. He pushed the cart
while she held onto his arm
as they passed into the cold night.

V-J Day

Throughout the '40s
guys from the neighborhood
used to walk to the plant
from Pine Street down to Oak.
Each of them with a lunch pail,
maybe a thermos of coffee.

When the Japanese were defeated
with 2 A-bombs on 2 days in August '45
there was relief. Nobody knew
'til later that their production
of green salt made it possible.

Afterward, when the awards arrived
for their service to the country
they were proud, and rightly so.
But then nobody knew 'til later
that the men and the old neighborhood
were as radioactive as Hiroshima.