COFFEE POEM

By: Gerry N. Peralta

Afternoons when the sky
Turns a shade
Coffee

And the sun creams
The foamy clouds

I sit and sip
Life's bitter-sweet
Brew

Thankful that,
If only for coffee,
Life's already
Well lived.

BONSAI YEARS

When I noticed the roots growing out

Of the bonsai tray today,

After clipping and snipping the branches and twigs

For a hundred weeks,

I heard the sound of scissors in me, crying

Clipping the wings of warm tending

Unto, perhaps, a final fold

The playground of small, fallen aratilles

Turning into a dell of desolate leaves

Still infantile yet infirm in their aged minuteness

I leave the tray on the landing

The next half of stairs, growing shorter and smaller,

As I rush to answer the door

My son - home from a final tour

Of duty?

You are as distant as a sun flare from a sunflower, but you touch me with a nearness the universe has ever since known, the intimacy of a moonbeam reflecting in a dewdrop.

RAIN AND REASON

1s and 0s of liquid gigabytes

God's old telegraph

Tapping on my roof again

Morse code of DNA

Spiralling down the water spout

Telling the long winded tale

Of giga-years -

From single cells

Turning into cell phone users

Their laptops pitter-pattering

How reason rhymes

With rain.