Laurie Klein

For the Director, to the tune of “The Cup of Mourning.” Dawn, in her tattered veils, wafts one last breath over the pond like a bridal train; the ivory mesh snags, opening on a rain-pearled leaf, a peeling scroll of birch inked with cryptic lines— alas, no message there for a widow. French press steeps as layers of gauze keep parting, God’s hand there, stirring a glimpse within morning’s swirl of cream marbled through coffee, easing this ache we call…

Such dubious tutors: the upwardly mobile drone whose instinct sinks his career with a single sting; the flim-flam deer tick, upended, six legs waving, with two new ones, nose hair thin and due to emerge before she self-destructs from Siphon Arrest; and, out-slumming all comers, the fly wannabe, that inveterate pond bum and bottom crawler, the caddis worm, sheathed with twiglets and crumbs of stone, bits of rotted sedge, an earring back, a long-gone snail’s bivalve casket. As it was…