High Seas

         We live our younger lives, instinctually learning, studying books, ever preparing; plans and strategies seem to make sense. A robust social hunger, a pliant mind, and an elastic sensual body sets the table for supper to feed you, enrich your psyche, and broaden you.
    However, moving forth in age, the invincible self erodes, and aspirations fade away like mists in sunlight. We learn uninvited lessons, hopefully gaining grace and kindness to some degree. Over our years, events occur, battles are lost or won, but are always paid for. Injustice and disappointment absorb the former hunger of those keen plans, mitigated by intruding reality; and that tattered bravado recedes, but not entirely.
   People you know, young and old, die. Small catastrophes claim you. You humbly learn those stinging chapters where not only is life not fair, but it is teeming with deceit, agony, fraud and and not a little humor.
   So you cloak yourself in a fabric woven with existence riddles and irony. You present a little laughter, a small measure of stifled hysteria, and brandish cautious celebration. Joy remains but is tempered now with a gradual surrender to those changes you cannot actuate.
    Next you set your brave boat to coordinates of resilience and steer the rudder to  family harbors, coves of compassion; taking onboard friends, dogs, and supplies that please and comfort you. You control not the winds, nor the tides, not anything but your own humbled boat. Yet the sun is out there too, the fish and birds, your prayers,  and stars to guide you.


revised 3/2014

5/29/10

A pitch...

Dear Readers, here is a pitch for my tween book, "Lane's Diamond". Please read it and let me know if you would be interested in reading such a book for you, your sister, daughter, cousins, whatever. A couple excerpts, from the manuscript are on the blog below.


--A best friend’s betrayal, battling the rigors of a new middle school, a boyish body, Lane’s self-discovery is all uphill it seems. Not to mention her father’s heart problem and that ache left by the departure of her older sister. What’s a young lady to do? Talk to herself that’s what! What social standards?
LANE’S DIAMOND is about 18,000 words, told with self-mocking humor expressed by 'thinking out loud'. Lane is a girl who demonstrates a talent for observation and emotional reckoning that makes her a kid other kids would want to know. And another thing,softball is in her blood.

c HBMorrell

Counselor

I saw her today, her eyes like raisins
and let her delving verbal tongs
lift and measure my mad nest for awhile.
My voice rolled out like a bad cartoon,
not matching my lemonade rimmed lips
at all.

Afterward, I structure a
public countenance again
on the breezeway outside,
but there is no breeze.
Social standards seem to
negate singular worth.

At home, the kolanchoe looks
so muscular and pretty.
Its green scalloped fleshy leaves present
the orange splendor of it’s tiny blooms,
all pelvised in terra cotta.

And how the sun encouraged,
it’s wet soil to
push up weedy new shoots next to it,
that spoke to me.

First Rain In Six Months

Parrying through the particulate air
rain drops finally smack onto smoggy leaves,
soot filled asphalt, splatter on
roofs crusted with dust and pollen
pelting cement that shatters the drops
a thousand times again.


Alley ways creased with ancient urine
and sticky dried bin seepage
receive their shower with a stink.
Endless roadways moisten, fill,
their gaining waters
mixing and running with lurid oils
gyrating on their surfaces.


And on the hills, parched beds,
and rock ravines,
rivulets begin, join arms, becoming streams
to anoint the arid basin once again.
Twigs soften, stones move, bark swells
and birds find feasts everywhere.
Even coyote and cougar somehow know
their prey will be rounder soon.

Rinsing the canyons and landscapes,
the clouds with their rain,
the perfect tilt of the earth,
have all done their work.

Go with Her



Old man,
his twisted toes in old boots
steps to his front door,
the frame bucks each time he forgets
to drop the chain.

His mortgage is satisfied
but the house is empty.
His slow blue sedan and he
have an understanding
that saves both their lives.

But he misses her cooking still,
the steaming kitchen in winter.

He rakes the maple leaves now
without being there with them,
telling their treasury of
summer stories,
tendering crimson and russet comfort,
a minuet of circular faith.

But he sees not
the delicate cellulous prints
diffuse on the sullen dark earth.
He lost his crimson,
bleached from his heart
like the paint on his barn
when she grew thin.

He lost love;

opens his mail,
shifts the grate on the furnace
and reaches in half arcs
to gather lost strands
that now seem to honor
no new beginnings.

Highland Avenue Shelter

Highland Avenue Shelter


This feline pair
lifted from
the acute cages of last chance;
a lithe adolescent
a big eared toddler.

A new title
is now suddenly fitted on them.
They regard floors and doors
spread out before them
like a thrilling new book.
Upholstered terrain has to be charted,
enemies avoided.
Specific human scents and food odors,
roll around them,
and those voices crossing above them
are without fear, or dismissal
or disdain.

Their large eyes soften,
pupils shrink and align,
and questing whiskers
are soon thrust into cushions
or warm chests.
Finally, their newly proud paws
angle into rest
like a baron’s arms
in portrait.

Lane's Diamond - excerpt

Lane strided on, her face full with determination. Suddenly, she heard Erica’s voice around the nearest corner. Actually it was her laugh and then her words. So, she had company...maybe Alicia. Then Lane heard another voice, Darren’s voice! Quickly, Lane found herself jumping behind a ficus hedge into someone’s front garden.
The two of them rounded the corner coming right by her. Lane’s heart pounded like an old rail engine pumping up and down. Darren had his arm around Erica’s shoulders while she giggled and cooed and pinched him softly.
“What do you know? Those reptiles!” Lane mouthed the words silently. She had been so right about Erica’s motives for the last few weeks, and maybe more than that! She watched them amble past, this close to her that she wanted to trip them both.
After a few minutes she ran home, taking an alternate loop. As she ran she kept thinking, I should have said something to them! Anything, like, “I was just chasing down the UPS guy!” or “So kids, you’re in love and you don’t tell me?!” But more like, “You rotten-stinking-behind-my-back scum...”
The sun was dropping as fast as Lane’s self esteem. She raced up to her room but not so obviously that her mom suspected anything. Her mom called out, “Back so soon? Dinner in thirty minutes! Oh, and maybe clean up that room of yours...”
Lane hurled herself on her bed, stunned. She and Erica had clearly chosen different paths to growing up. She knew something was going on with those two, but stubbornly, she wouldn’t believe it, just wouldn’t ask, not that and let the friendship collapse. But it had anyway.
The tears came only after most of the anger drained away, replaced with sadness. Sadness that she had lost her best friend to what? A boy? Indeed, as she thought about it more, she realized that it wasn’t Darren she cared so much about. It was the loss of a trusted friendship and all that was tied up in that.