3 Small Poems

1

I think my life became richer

when I started to think of

experiences 

as having expiration dates.

It is only prudent

to eat last night's leftovers

(that will soon go bad)

before the can of soup

that could survive the apocalypse unscathed.

So too with the person in front of you,

the conversation of the moment,

the aesthetic beauty,

the thread of desire,

the passion, the whim, the spark

that you may never feel again.

The book, the history, the theory,

or the persistent buzz of online news -

they can wait.

They will still be there later,

when everything else is rubble and ash.

2

I spend hours inside, alone, 

crafting birdhouses - 

painstakingly, lovingly. 

I do this all winter, 

through long nights and cold days. 

Spring comes, and I place them outside.

I put them in the perfect places,

and fill them with all the things birds love most.

I retreat and watch through the windows. 

Even when I look away,
I am still watching, really.

But the birds never come.

3

As a child,

I read books on the lawn

while my father cleaned the gutters.

But he was only cleaning our gutters,

and I was reading about the world.