Orchid Dance

Orchids dance across the paper,
green silk arms around each other,
moving to some music we don’t hear.

Small cattleyas in their party colors,
handiwork of hybrid growers’ dreams —
Miss red-orange with purple lip
nodding with her sisters,
sweet lavender with violet,
and snowy bridal white
overtaking little mustard
with her thin magenta throat —

all surprises from this palette
where I dip to find the pigments
to splash across their rhumba beat
of joy.

New Rain

Sky a mellow gray,
a train whining as it goes,
and I wonder what to write.

This will be a day of calm,
wounded coming back on planes
to questionable conditions
in Veteran’s Hospitals.
What worse than loss
of legs and eyes, but damaged
brains, hidden in the skull,
not to be examined,
overlooked by military doctors
until too late, and more troops
are sent to the endless war.

The train is gone, the sky
still gray, and passing tires
are whining in new rain.