SPARROWS
Focus on Other Power,
pay less attention to yourself.
Beauty lurks in a corner
of practically all scenarios.
Life is like a Spanish lunch.
You don’t know what you will get
until it lands on your plate.
Gratitude is its own reward.
I wake up in the morning
fearing what the day has in store.
And here I sit at the portside
with the woman I adore.
“Why don’t you write a poem
about the sparrows?” she asks.
Fortune smiles on the wicked.
It’s one of her easier tasks.
SEAGULLS
Maria is the perfect
woman for poet
Marcus Cumberlege. *
Alone together
in their tiny apartment,
hibernating gulls,
Perfectly content
to sit here doing nothing
in view of the sea.
* I’ll give 1001 reasons for this in another much longer poem on our return from Spain.