California Colors

Your prolonged absence
stretches the dry season
bleaching our green hills
straw yellow
fading to a lifeless tan
as streambeds,
Delirious for a drink,
Hallucinate cold springs
in a mist of fine dust,
Conjure colonies of tadpoles
rising in waves of dry heat,
As schools of minnows
mass in fluid dynamics,
While, under the high arc
of a pastel-ribbed rainbow
barely visible to the naked eye,
Freshwater shrimp ride thermal air currents,
Appearing, disappearing
then reappearing,
Like the repeated flash
of a firefly’s light,
on a starless night,
in this oasis
of the mind
of streambeds,
cracked and gone to powder.

Four Takes

Take the boy on the beach,
Shall we say age seven or eight?
Molding sand with his hands
cementing turrets, spires & parapets,
using seawater to shape a vision
knowing that what he forms
the high tide will surely spoil.
Take the young artist,
Shall we say age twenty-seven or eight?
Molding a clump of kneaded clay
using the momentum of the pottery wheel
casting in revolutions,
hands sculpting in three dimensions
vases formed from wet ceramics,
later glazed with a leaf-fringed legend
that sellers will surely discount.
Take the veteran filmmaker,
Shall we say age forty-seven or eight?
Molding subconscious memories-
a script fused with mystery and doubt
shot in kaleidoscopic technicolor,
Framed as a collage of dreams
that reviewers will surely reject.
Take the ancient poet
Shall we say age seventy-seven or eight?
Molding stanzas of scissored dreams,
Conjured by a misunderstood Muse:
Maker of mirage, rainbows, stone
rippled waters and echos,
Challenging all who write-
to rewrite again and again and
discover the pathway to paradise.

No Kings

Seven million Americans marching,
showing support for the freedom
that our forefathers fought and won
from a feckless King only interested in taxes & tribute.

Now 250 years later we have “a wanta be” King
who is making billions selling his Crypto meme-coins
to foreign governments seeking favors and to millionaires
seeking to become favored billionaires and seeking still more.

This King loves a show of power and calls our Latino workers
illegals who must leave even though they have families
and are working jobs that no others will work.
It makes no sense as our King is callous, cruel and corrupt.

Now this King has his agents outfitted in combat gear and masks
arresting Latinos to meet a 20 million quota that he has set
yet who will work on our farms, factories and homes
as nobody does it better than our Latino immigrants.

Now this King is raging that his agents are not meeting the quota
so he blames it on the democrats and sends soldiers
to their cities to end all the crime even if crime is way down
and these soldiers standing on streetcorners are just for show.

We seven million Americans are marching to answer the question
“Can we keep our democratic form of government?”
We rally and march just as our ancestors did 250 years ago
showing this King that his con is coming to an end.

Tim Thornburgh graduated from Seattle University and shortly thereafter joined the Peace Corps. Tim was sent to Micronesia and served as a high school teacher of English and History at Outer Islands High School in Ulithi Atoll. After he finished his two year Peace Corps assignment, Tim worked in Yap, Pohnpei, Saipan and more recently the Philippines. Tim now lives in Bremerton, Washington in the spring, summer and fall. Every winter Tim returns to the tropics and enjoys fishing and writing poetry. His has been published in Amelia. San Fernando Poetry Journal, 7th Circle Pyrite, Four Tulips, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Lowlife Lit Press, Humanidat, Tomorrow Magazine, Moose Bound Press Journal, Sublimation, TrashLight Press and After/Thought Literary.