Poems
by Diane Webster
Starling Couple
After the lawn watering
a couple of starlings
swoop in to find
what goodies they can find.
Pink pavers and railroad ties
might hold hidden seeds
from now-stored bird feeders.
One starling steps on a wet, dead leaf
which sticks to its foot.
It high steps and shakes
its foot to rid the sticky leaf
like someone wearing one snowshoe
floundering around in snow.
Finally, it reaches down with its beak,
plucks the leaf off its foot
and looks at its partner, Yuck!
Faith
I sit atop the slide --
a lifeguard guardian
watching.
Watching for Grandpas car
I know is coming;
today the green car turns
into the driveway where I wait.
The telephone rings;
my aunt calls
because I am the caller ID
before anyone knows what that is.
My mother paints the ceiling
with a bucket of paint in one hand
and jokes shell drop the paint on me,
but I know shell tip it all over herself,
and I watch her clean up the mess.
Judy tells me if I walk
with a dead grasshopper
in my hands behind my back,
it will disappear.
To prove it, she walks
and shows me her empty hands,
but when I try,
the grasshopper remains.
Fog Overflow
Fog overflows the canyon banks
and floods the rim road.
A car snorkels through foam;
headlights feeble against the tide.
Black cows drift by like dislodged boulders;
white cows snag the fog against hides
in barely visible grazing
heightening danger of one lying on the road.
The road curves around the canyon
now a fog beach beckoning a wade,
a wade from road to lands end
I Am A Ruler
I never measure up,
not over twelve inches.
Good for regular snowfalls,
but super storms Im buried
never capable of exactitude.
Each inch records 1/16 depths
of growth along
my rigid foot length.
Foot-long hotdogs,
foot-long sandwiches,
a human foot
never a foot.
I am a ruler
of my twelve-inch domain
measured by short,
long lines, inch by inch
a perfect ruler.
For Real
People stare at the blurred
reflection of the woman
in the mud puddle lying
on the sidewalk cement.
They squint in an attempt
to see clearer but all
a muddle of shape and
color smeared in abstract.
Never knowing
if they look up
she stands separate
and focused for real.
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