SOLITUDE

Solitude is a bee keeper.

A beekeeper who drinks

too much. He rises

at dawn, but it

doesn't matter, he still

drinks too much.

Even the bees admonish him

saying "Mr. Beekeeper, Bob, 

you drink too much." Or so he

imagines them admonishing,

in his delirium.

But does it stop him?

of course not: he is their

master! Their

keeper! And perhaps 

he doesn't drink too

much; perhaps it is just

something he imagines

in his delirium. Oh,

to return to the days

of the ancient Roman

Empire, and to keep

bees there, who spoke 

so very little, and

admonished even less

A LITTLE GIRL HUGS THE KINDLY BICYCLE OWNER

She tries the blue bicycle. Not so good. Then the red one.

Not what she had hoped for. Then the yellow. No, somehow,

yellow is worse: than the red, than the blue, than the green.

She hasn’t tried the green bicycle yet. But soon enough,

as the reader already knows, it will join the ranks of the blue,

the red, the yellow, and perhaps, if they ever decide to make

one, the orange. “Have I told you that we have

One pink bicycle left?” the kindly bicycle owner–with the

jolly laugh and the brown pants and the twinkle in his–

well, somewhere he has a twinkle–said, to the little girl, she

She tried to contain her joy, which is hard to do when you

are a hugging little girl. But she did, and she tried

the pink bicycle. Woosh here, wheee there, and so on.

Better than blue, better than red, then yellow, someday than

orange, like the sun, better than orange, unless the sun is pink.

If you want to know what happened next, you must read

the title of this poem, and then stop.