These Are My JOTtings...

Boketto: "The World Framed by My Window"

The child awakens in the heart of someone, who can adult...sometimes
Ooooooo, pretty light that dances on my window sill and off the glass into my eyes

The birdies came to the big tree in my front yard to eat the red, red berries.
They are now all gone. How quickly they eat. How quickly they fly away.
Please, come back and be my friends.

My nose is wet upon the glass. No wonder cleaning it is such a pane.
Cloudy thoughts call me to the land of sleep, but wait...

clouds are in the sky, floating, floating, floating

Some clouds seem to waltz along the avenue in flowing evening gowns,
some trot on by as though late for some unknown appointment,
some lash the sky in thinnest swaths,
some float as though cotton candy is their only food.

Wind chases windy friends in the blades of grass,
grasses wave to me and I wave back.

A squirrel disembowels a pine cone in search of its last meal
or the seeds of generations to come

The funny Mockingbird perches on the topmost branch,
singing every song he has ever learned, until...

I sing the songs back to him.

Flummoxed, he freezes for a moment, then starts, again, his inner jukebox
at a maddening pace, apparently hoping to drown out my rather inexperienced song, until...

I sing what I hear him sing...in that order...

Now, he sings furiously, demanding to be the king of the mountain or the elm tree
or...at the very least...better than me.

I stay quiet. The mockingbird calms down, resuming his normal pace. Smug in his victory over a mere human, who sees...

the crape myrtle blooms spiral in the air, lazily to the ground
as I walk on the frilly pink blooms all the way to the sky.

by Jay O'Toole
on April 6th, 2018