Author: Kay Foley

Oh voluptuous day!  You are grander than
a market basket overfull with ripe tomatoes
a woman’s hat plumed netted jeweled
a bottle of the finest driest sparkling champagne
a perilously tall cake layered with cream ganache fruit 
      shavings of chocolate
a bed laid with sixteen pillows poufs of comforter
      sheets of perfect cotton
grander even than the Eiffel Tower on a clear
      starry night in April viewed from a
      blue boat on the Seine
      an accordion player perched at the prow
Yes grander than all of this!
Here in our humble town we 
offer a standing ovation.

Gorgeous perfect perfectly gorgeous day
and I am home again with these two dogs
Miles dozing like a child with his toys
Rufus lying prettily alert for danger
I propped up with pillows writing.
All is well.  All is exceptionally well.

Lovers in every port
intermittent affairs of the heart
with people who know me only
through my words who lavish me 
with bold praise unafraid
to tender their admiration to say
I love your mind
You are amazing
Etc.
So many gentle souls pass through 
my life lifting me on their shoulders
like some hero abashed.

Orange crescent moon showed through
the trees low slung and huge.
How these marvels of the universe
appear one way this time one way that 
no cause known or sought by me
only splendid marvelous effect
of which I am the loving recipient.

I dreamed I had fallen in love with a rabbit man
who walked on two legs
who was tall and lanky
who was a dashing clever hero.
An adventure dream.
We were fighting our way out of an evil place.
But I was completely smitten with him
and that in itself was an adventure
free of ambivalence
one hundred percent
knowing
possessed of a singular feeling.
Maybe that is what afterlife is like.

My head pounds and aches on this first of September.  
Evil dastardly ragweed lurks at every turn
even just outside my bedroom window.
I was too happy to bother rooting it out this summer.  
Now I cast curses, give it the stink eye, knowing full well 
that these gestures are futile, even childish.  
The natural world that I love has flattened me.  
A tall common and might I say unpretty weed has won.
I am defeated.  
Humbly I loosen the cap on a bottle of pills 
hoping for respite.

I want to write a poem that could change a life.  
My own or better still yours.
A change for the good of course 
no evil plan on my part
no hoped for dastardly deed.
I want to strike a chord 
shed a beam of light
ring a bell that we have been 
unable to reach you and I.  
My hopes are high, anyone can see that
for I have taken up the business of Joy.
Lucky me.  Lucky lucky me. 
And I will share.

Things I cannot know
number into the thousands.
I hope for wisdom.

Watching for a spark a speck of light
in the dark chasms of my brain some
inspiration a glimmer the turn of a page
the book of my mind opening to a pithy
phrase the astonishing illumination of
an otherwise hidden flight of stairs leading
me and you out of the mundane world of
this and that to some small secret bliss.
Alas the spark the glimmer the page the
staircase the bliss do not appear.
Not today.

My birthday has come and gone this
sixtieth and I feel loved by many loving
of many more and ready to fill up the
large pocket of my next twenty years with
tender abandon 
unyielding acceptance 
the wisdom and wildness of age
gentle strength of purpose and
piles upon piles of adventures leading 
me onward to my true north.