Simba

Watch carefully the path you casually tread,
for silently, I am intently watching you,
each step you take heard, and noted.

You may hide in a rustling grove of trees
however that will do no good for you,
nor will the gently waving grass hide you.

There is no help to call, no savior,
to rise up and thwart my advance,
there is only you and I, soon to be one.

That tawny ripple in the midday sunlight,
it is I devouring the seconds and minutes
until our journey meets in the dust of today.

You should know I have waited for you,
it is on the gentle breeze your musk rode,
a tingling arousal of my senses announced you.

Do not fear me, give in to this chance moment,
opportunity made us companions for our dalliance,
desire’s craving the hunger that feeds this kismet.

We each have a place in this life, to give and to take,
defined by an evolving chain of living and dying.
I feel no malice, we are both prisoners to our birth.

You will be an honor to my ancient royalty,
For I am Simba, King of the Jungle, and you,
are a delicious irony for my kingdom’s table.

©2018, Donald Harbour

 

 

 

A political barnyard

The barnyard political pastures
are being rutted by feral swine.
Their heads foul with their own droppings,
snouts coated with mendacious swill.
They are gluttonous hogs eating garbage
tossed by Praetorian money changers.
Bloated guts rumbling with putrid dogma
baked in billionaire board rooms.
The mindless population of poultry pecking,
squawking, strutting, satisfied by jowl crumbs,
Chickens accepting what ever is left
clueless about their ultimate plucked outcome.
Together they breathe contaminated air
ignorant of the poison they inhale.
There are squabbles over pigweed,
pearlwort, purslane, petty feedlot growth.
Attention to the triviality of life, ignoring
their ultimate fate, a slaughterhouse.
When they are gone they leave only
the waste of their pitiless passing.
Another layer of manure awaiting
the next generation’s contribution.

©2014, Donald Harbour

Cows are plotting to end the world

When the world ended the atmosphere blazed,
From horizon to horizon in a blue methane haze.

Homo sapiens died, their extinction complete,
No longer lesser creatures with forks would they eat.

The conspiracy planned since the dawn of time,
When the first rumen, humans killed to dine.

People had ignored the United Nations report
Instead laughing and saying: “It’s a crude joke of sort!”

There in words, as plain as day, it could be read,
“Cattle eliminations caused global warming,” it said.

But the truth was hidden by burps, belches and farts,
As the world’s cattle diligently performed their parts.

Each had a job to eat as much food as they could,
Ruminating gas production by thoroughly chewing their cud.

All this, while humans fought over oil prices, religion, tax,
Miley Cyrus CD’s, political parties, plastic boobies and sex.

Cows lay in fields placid, non threatening and benign,
Methodically eating, chewing, flatulating, biding their time.

The earth grew warmer as their efforts rose in the air,
While scientist begged humans to eat less meat, in despair.

Cow pies covered the fields as the green grass grew abundant,
Environmentalists argued over positions inane and redundant.

Then an upheaval so massive it’s hard to understand,
Cows the world over organized to make the last gaseous stand.

With an earth shuddering roar cows let loose a trombone blast,
Humans held their noses, grimacing, gagged with a gasp.

The skies were finally saturated to the fullest extent,
There was no other contribution, not a single cow could vent.

All bovines moved as if a perceived signal had been given,
To rivers and lakes and hidden valleys they were driven.

One volunteer cow stood on a Rocky Mountain height,
Its suicide mission, the methane atmosphere to light.

It struck a match, a beacon that flared a bright red,
And thrust it into the green layer just above its horned head.

The rest is history, there is nothing more one can say,
Only cows populate the earth no humans lived past that day.

Note: Several years past a Wall Street Journal article proposed “Cow Tax” in an effort to underscores the Greenhouse-Gas Divide. I thought; “Could there really be a grain of truth here?” The poem is a response to ‘what if’!
*****************************************************

©2014, Donald Harbour

Dali got it right

Last night I happily dreamed,
Our world’s ship turned upside down,
Giant oaks hung suspended in the air,
While birds flew on the ground.

Air was not polluted for breath,
All water pure for drinking too,
The earth’s creatures took photographs,
Of caged humans in their public zoo.

It was a world of imaginations,
Where peace reigned supreme,
Where guns were licorice sticks,
And oil was frothy whipped cream.

Blue skies were always overhead,
Rivers and lakes placidly flowed,
Fish were scaled in sparkling diamonds,
Multicolored butterflies paved each road.

Cows were made for milk and mooing,
Chickens cheerfully clucked a chicken song,
Lions laid beside fluffy white lambs,
No one ever heard the words: “This is wrong!”

There were no gods or seraph,
No torture or misguided religious grief,
No war mongers, government or politicians,
Pontificating their bellicose belief.

Pink peddle-pushers road horseback,
Through fields of limeade green,
Not found were homeless without homes,
Unbranded tennis shoes were only seen.

Dali was captain of this wondrous ship,
Sailing over the sea of cosmic space,
The passengers of his whimsical bark,
Different hues of the same human race.

Dawn pulled me from the dream,
It whispered a new beginning had begun,
Startled I realized in a jolt of epiphany,
All of us, could make this year, the one.

©2014, Donald Harbour

Grandfather’s house

When I look back to childhood
I remember my grandfather’s house;
its smells rancor with age, with
things past slowly settling, slipping
into a grave of forgotten times.
The sweet odor of cooking bacon,
buttermilk biscuits, snuff, and drying herbs;
the seasons changed but the smells remained.
In winter the wind blew a shrill whistle,
drum beating against the clapboards.
Inside was cozy and warm, the iron stove
painting the room in sepia light, yellowed
by the glowing firebox Isinglass windows.
Grandmother in her straight back hardwood rocker,
knitting against its slow rhythmic creak,
slow as the hours that the house held,
rhythmic as the heartbeat counting seconds.
When the seconds ceased they were gone.
The house no longer had a purpose,
its life sucked into the depths of the grave.
Joyless, nonspeaking, life’s sigh silenced,
nothing left but aging memories to speak for it.

©2013, Donald Harbour

 

What would you eat

The meal was a Green Tea Rice,
You did not like it, dirty looking,
Miso, seaweed in a broth with octopus,
Sashimi, temaki, chirashi, maki sushi,
Not something one should eat, ever,
The meal was traditional Japanese.
I thought, if this was all there was,
What would you eat before you died?

Live, love, work, and eat in the good ole South

I like my cracklin’ cornbread
eaten with a pot of pinto beans,
and a pan of salt pork cooked with
collard, poke, and turnip greens.
I like my chicken fried in butter,
served with mash sweet potatoes too,
a baked white onion pie and
slow cooked Brunswick venison stew.
I like my Mallard duck roasted
stuffed with Arkansas wild rice,
for dessert a steamed bread pudding
and orange sauce is mighty nice.
I like to pick my peaches
off my granny’s lone peach tree,
put them in a brown sugar cobbler
and have a pitcher of sun brewed iced tea.
I like to pick yellow sweet corn,
and eat it raw right off the stalk,
have dinner with friends and kinsfolk,
and long summer evening porch talk.
I like my smoked bacon sliced thick,
in its grease my eggs turned over easy,
or scrambled with last falls souse,
that is if it won’t make you queasy.
I like catfish cooked in cornmeal
with  coleslaw, pickles and bread,
a moon pie and an RC cola,
a shady place to nap after I’m fed.
I like….no, I love cayenne peppers,
eaten every meal fresh off the vine,
or orange Habanero and Serrano,
pickled in vinegar, saltwater and wine.
I like a bowl of wilted lettuce,
fried pork chops and black eyed peas,
a pan of milk gravy and biscuits
dipped in the syrup of wild honey bees.
I like my thick buttermilk to have
golden flakes floating on its top,
and mom’s toasted molasses bran bread
with red-eye gravy in the skillet to sop.
I like my coffee brewed black and strong
in our 100-year-old percolator pot,
Aunt Mabel’s cinnamon buns from the oven,
when they are still steamy and hot.
I like each year’s bounty of our fields,
a true pleasure for anyone’s mouth,
but most of all I like the way we live, love,
work, play, and eat, in the good Old American South.

Now, y’all come for dinner, ya hear?

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

A birds nest tale

In the backyard, with indifferent abandon,
a holly bush leans against the fence.
An invitation that will be taken.

Within the protective dense thorny green foliage,
mom and dad Cardinal make a twig home.
Soon peeps announce a new families hatch.

Foraging with industry the male and female
endlessly fly to the yard garden grocery store.
The tomato horned worms do not survive.

It is an organic garden relying on benevolent help
from these talon red feathered creatures and good bugs.
Ravenous chicks doom the plant destroying worms.

A peek in the nest reveals two fluffy hungry babes
their open yellow rimmed beaks pointed skyward.
They are ravenous to any rustle of the branches.

Flashing dazzling colors, song birds dart about,
one of the benefits of planting a harvest of veggies.
Everyone benefits the bounty; birds and neighbors.

The family dogs seem to sense their unspoken duty
protectively lying in the shade beneath the nest branch.
Coming inside at nightfall they give up their guard watch.

Night darkness can become the indiscriminate evil hour for life,
when dark hides the skulking casual destroyers of homes.
The time of burglars, murders, the devils spawn, feral cats.

One of the neighbors daily feeds these treacherous felines,
in sympathy for their dispassionate wild primitive existence.
The cats have no morals, only a taste for baby birds.

©2013 Donald Harbour

The princely frog, a nursery rhyme

Dark folded upon folded
thus the room was molded,
as a fire flickered and danced.

The midnight hour struck
as each minute was plucked,
screaming mortal time advanced.

There a foul long-nosed witch
scowling with teeth black as pitch
to a fire added peat from a stinking bog.

Then from out of the gloom
with a hop into the retched room
came a princely magical speckled frog.

The frog loudly belched, then spoke
in a commanding princely croak,
“for a kiss I’ll grant you one wish.”

“You frog leave me alone”
said the scraggly old crone,
“or you’ll be my dinners’ main dish.”

The frog was undeterred
and once again it gently demurred,
“a wish for a single kiss.”

There was an evil cackle,
the cry of a strangled Grackle
that ended in a venomous hiss.

“Alright, grant me a desire,
lest on a spit you roast ‘or this fire,”
so she puckered up and gave him a peck.

“My wish is without my broom
I want to soar around this room
now grant it you ugly warted speck.”

“Done,” said he with a wink
and quicker than a gnat eye blink
the witch disappeared with a sigh.

An incessant buzzing in the air
announced an insect coursing there,
the sound of a common house fly.

The frog opened its mouth
a long tongue suddenly sprang out
and swallowed the bug without a word.

Now the only sounds in the firelight
were the crickets chirping  in the night
and  joyously singing of a single black bird.

The frog sat before the fire
peacefully in his princely frog attire,
a most satisfied look on his froggy face.

The witch received her wished boon,
un-broomed she flew around the room
and, instead of frog for dinner, she took his place.

“Ribit!”

©2013, Donald Harbour

The end reward

there is a stream
silent running over rocks
where moss grows

wading its icy waters
slipping on green slime
is a dilettante adventure

on the other side
lies an ancient orchard
with gnarled giants

arduous is the journey
as all of life’s journeys
the only end is hope

before I reach to pick
the fruit of my desire
the grove’s scent assails me

I can tell the pears
are rotten this year

©2012, Donald Harbour