Photo Credit: Jackie James

So, it’s my eighth birthday, you see,
Or so they tell me, these sentimental humans.

One glance at my Mistress with my big brown orbs
And there is a treat on its way.

And today, my presumptive birthday, I’ll hit the jackpot.

One cockeyed, woebegone stare
At my Master,
And he’ll get me all the pizza crust
In Christendom.

So, I’m their birthday boy, don’t you see,
A red-letter day of their making.
Maybe true, maybe not,
But it keeps the goodies coming.
Who am I to complain.

“Otis, the birthday boy,
I’m a clever canine,
Toasty warm, fed to nearly fat
And employed.

A DOG!
With a real, live, human job.
With an editorial berth on the local tabloid.
Room and board of the finest fashion
Lavished on me,sparing no expense.

The job description?
One candid, terse, insightful comment a month
My own byline and header “Otis sez ……….”
Before I cuddle up in their bed.

A one-liner worth its weight
In doggie treats.
Who would have imagined.

It’s all about me, and should be.

Hum, I think I’ll master Latin
Before I’m nine.

Charlene James-Duguid
Amissville, Virginia

Photo Credit: Geoff Gowen

It should have been an ordinary sunrise,
In a common year,
At a place like any other.
With everyday coffee in our cups
We looked out of warm windows
Stunned
In disbelief.

Never before and never to be again
The forest bears crystal fruits.
Sparkling droplets,
Hanging silently from slender branches,
Ready to dance if we ask.
Morsels of frozen magic,
Spectral in greens and reds,
Eagerly wishing for a permanent home.

Allowed to be,
At only a certain degree,
They try calling up
Powers rarely used,
To fill the landscape
With fragile beauty
And permission to stay.

So strong a thing to see
Becomes so hard a word
To sing.
None quite right
This perfection is so singular.

Its charm will stay on,
If named.
Existence would be assured.
Find the word, give it a baptism,
Be in its grandness.
Wonder in its mystery
Rest with icy diamonds
In the magic forest
Together, forever.

Charlene James- Duguid
Amissville, Virginia

I couldn’t fall asleep last night
And I don’t really want to lie
I snuck into the kitchen
And had a piece of your pie.

Your crust and apples were so good
I reached for piece number two
But reconsidered my decision
And Instead sent this note to thank you.

Why Hindi? Query

An Asian-Indian for

Abandonment parse.

My grandmother, who used her little scale
To weigh each meal during Lent,
Would not know what to make of it.

‘What, no numbers, no sobbing,
No penance of a hundred rosaries a day
For the next month?
How can God forgive, if you were let off so
Easy?”

‘I don’t know, Granny, all I can say
Is that times,
And maybe even God, change.”

Charlene James
Amissville, Virginia

True friends brave the winds
Bringing Nature’s selfless gifts
Armed merely with smiles.

Harsh infirmities
Of their own, hidden deeply
By a country wish

Bill and Reva Jo
Share, then share again, hopes for
Better days to come

Remembering youth’s
Free and easy carefree ways
They laugh loud again.

To dare the Devil,
Look him straight in his face
Latch onto his fiery eyes
And say, ‘Who do you think you are,
Anyway.”

Dangerous. Yes, it is.
But she does it every day,
Several times, as a matter of fact.
Without flinching
Her three-year-old frame.

She

Mounts step stools
Scales ladders,
Tumbles off beds
With agility known only to the
Great Wallendas.

Performing for a camera
Adds to the excitement
But nothing can compete
With dismissing, without care,
The brimstone footprints
on the playroom floor.

She

Hanging upside down
On the thinnest of ropes,
While waving a tiny hand at
The neighbor’s corgi,
Threw Beelzebub into flash-fire fits.

Egging her on,
To greater heights,
the Father
Reminded her,
“Its in your name,
The Valora part. ”

“You’ll never fall to evil,
Blink at fear,
And
When you learn to spell,
The word you’ll choose first,
Will be

INVINCIBLE.”

Charlene James-Duguid
Amissville , Virginia

How does a building qualify,
A place earn its title,
Its keep?

Floors, walls, ceiling, roof
Tied with a ribbon of love.
Long days and night
Make it be, only than.

With every creak, in every cranny,
A child, a father, mom, or brother
Hides a secret, wishes a wish,
Buries a surprise
To unearth only when the magic
Song, heard with delicious joy,

Breaks out.

One day a cat wanders in,
Another, a bird hides a nest while
Eavesdropping on
A weed, believed to be flower.

It tests
The truth of its name.
Games are played,
A doll is rocked to sleep
In its cardboard box.

More and more moments
Create the possibility,
Till one day, fresh,
Brownies appear,
Their aroma captured,
Glassed under grandeur.

Without a doubt,
There is no doubt
It’s beyond doubt,
That this house is now a home.

Charlene James-Duguid
Amissville, Virginia

Photo by Jackie James

Lake effect stays with you
Through years of travel,
Gain and loss.

Forgetting the chill is impossible.
Indelible in its staying power,
Permanent.

You try
Correcting the — turtle-necked stance —
Ears crushed tight to shoulders.

You practice
Hands gloved, pocketed, protected
In case a classical career crops up.

You shuffle, conserving the energy
Used to move between sole and pavement
Hoping you will outlast the brutal cold.

You surrender,
Decades later, far from any lake
Or variety of the effect.

Your thoughts relive the sensation.
The constant internal shivers
Earthquaking at odd moments.

Fingers cramp,
Nails crack, cuticles dry up
Becoming thorns on the ends of icicles.

Ears regret forgotten muffs.
Lips greasified with layers of balm.
Eyes hooded, preventing any way of clear sight.

You return to Wisconsin,
The private,
Personal path.

A single footprint,
One,
Then the next.

You challenge the snow
While the imperious bluster
Over the waters, 

Only laughs the louder.

Charlene James-Duguid
Amissville, Virginia 

Gentle, protective
Rain’s sound keeps harm full away
Mossy clad, I rest.

*

Panic and Stress danced
Hand in hand down flowered aisles
Toward neoned Black Holes