In Rancho Mirage

In Rancho Mirage
the Prez meets the Prez
don't get out of Dodge
the Oracle says

In Rancho Mirage
the mirrors run deep
all those who make Haj
go miles before sleep

In Rancho Mirage
Obama meets Xi
is Maya a hodge-podge?
go 'n' ask the leafed tea

A Bouquet For My Dentist

I dispatched a thank-you note       in floral guise

tender tulips       for a tooth whose days were numbered

delicate Afsoon!         most beautiful!    most wise!

through your skill       my dental life blooms unencumbered

 

gentle doc!            you who embody pearly youth

gratitude!       you deftly plucked my rotten tooth

 

Quatrain occasioned by a "We Miss You!" Notice

To what do the dead subscribe?
what periodicity draws them?
what news do they seek? what tribe
of angelic beings awes them?

==========

Note scrawled on a form letter
that arrived today, addressed to my late father (sent by the subscription department of The Progressive, a left-wing magazine) ; the letter begins:

Dear Sam Israel:
We miss you, and I thought you might be missing us, too. . . .

My scrawled note reads:

Dear Progressive:

My father, Sam Israel, passed away in October of last year.  He loved your publication, and for that I thank you.  But you need send no further subscription reminders.  Sam Israel is now permanently unsubscribed.

Thanks!
David Israel

Music Theory

If music is only obsolete in moksha
       it demonstrates what utility in life?

perhaps it's employed to overcome inertia
   & regulate all the threads of joy & strife

Quatrain responsive to a question posed by Lewis Carroll

Loving or being loved. Which is best?           77
[from the index to Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno (1889)]

If each is incomplete without the other
yet both are in a partial manner blessed
why argue which is preferable? I'd rather
suggest the state of both-at-once is best