Poetry by Richard Kovac

Robin Haiku
the robin is proud as he winds down wet worm - delicious stomach!


Avatar in Green
I saw the green-eyed lady
in long-ago Seattle,
before me browsing
lithely in Orientlia,
and told her
of Taoist purgatories,
written in lore,
and which I have
since lived thru.
Her eyes were green as grass.
They must have been contacts.
How green!
At the time it seemed
like a divine revelation.
I was young.
What did it mean?


Method Acting
Hard to trust
a good actor.
What mask is next?

All of us
put on a good act.
We pretend.

Honesty is
a hard revelation.

In classical Greek
the word for
"actor"
and the word for
"hypocrite"
were identical.


The Bakery On The moon
"Moon moon
send me
a lovely macaroon."

If there is
nothing to eat
up there,
why go?.

NASA answers:
"Yet we will go
again to the moon
and soon
and we will open
a bakery
eventually."

It remains
to be seen.
Time will unmask
the profits.


The Sapling
I don't know
who planted it
or why he did,
but it's
a meek witness
with its white flowers
briefly flourishing
in spring
to the testament
of man
in the garden
of the earth.
I don't know
who made the garden
of the earth,
by name, perhaps,
but wonder and beauty
name him
as near as when
I touch
the sapling's bark.


The Complaint of the Colors
"Morbid" is not "slate-gray"
and "sin" is not like "scarlet".
"Envy" is not really "green"
or sadness "blue".
"Right is not "good"
and "left" isn't the "weaker".
The colors of the seasons
are arbitrary or mystic.
For that matter, "conservative"
and "liberal" may in fact differ
only as they are parsed.
We "look up" on who is tall
and "look down" on the short.
To be "just" isn't to be "fair";
yet these and other lies
are built into our speech
and hence into our minds
at the end of the optic nerve.
All the colors of the rainbow
are fine and fit...until
we catch them in our human mitt.
We are only half-cognizant
of the injustice we do
by our misuse of the colors
in order to be glib.



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