Praying for rain---

first day of summer
passing the pungent smell
of the white lilies
~ ~ ~ ~
DETERMINED MEETS RECONCILED
I give
up, like Richard
Allin did with squirels.
Since the feral cats didn't leave
during

my trip
and the tame ones
won't come inside after
they boarded for 10 days, I feed
them all.
~ ~ ~ ~
AT 75

They say
I'm aging well.
"Such pretty skin," they say.
What they don't know is makeup hides
brown spots.
~ ~ ~ ~
mom & baby cats
cavorting in shaded grass~
heat wilts the 'mums
~ ~ ~ ~
eating tomatoes
from Mississippi . . . bought
on our way back home
~ ~ ~ ~
3-hour birthday lunch
4 friends basking in one's
77th
~ ~ ~ ~
c 2011 by Pat Laster (author of A Journey of Choice) dba lovepat press

More summer shorties

Grandchild's
graduation
spoiled by malfunctioning
public address system, until
the names.
~ ~ ~ ~

Behind
eyelids, floaters,
like specimens on slides,
enter stage left, wander across
the screen.
~ ~ ~ ~

Raucous mother
Tennis
lesson over,
I can resume my seat
in the warming sea-air breeze of
the Gulf.
~ ~ ~ ~

Early Morning
Darkness,
nearing thunder
drives me from the front porch.
In fifteen minutes, it is light
again.
~ ~ ~ ~

Joplin
neat shelves of bread
on the only standing wall
after the twister
~ ~ ~ ~

eyes closed
facing the eastern sun
after last night's storm
~ ~ ~ ~

c 2011 Pat Laster dba lovepat press

Poems spawned in the Pensacola Beach area

At the high-rise condo

After
too many trips
to refill my coffee,
I nose around the cupboards, find
a mug.
~~~~
6:30 a.m.

At this
hour, only dog
walkers, bicyclists
and joggers out in Florida’s
summer.
~~~~

the Florida dove
pole-sits. . . below, sea breezes
cool a parking lot
~~~~

Morning

A cloudless sky
in Fort Pickens
the day granddaughter
graduates eighteenth
in her class of 300+,
her AP-weighted GPA
over four-point. Her father—
my first born—proud as punch.

Swallows dive,
a dove climbs, then floats
to a tennis court fence.
Sea breezes sound like the ocean.
~~~~

How can he be sure?

My baby is forty-one,
her first-born,
a newly-legal adult,
enjoys his “social”drinking.
“I know my limit,” he says,
but he’s so new at it,
how can he be sure?
~~~~

c June 13 2011 - Pat Laster
dba lovepat press

Check out my new novel,
A Journey of Choice
available at online book sellers

Been to Florida for 10 days

Be back soon for an accounting of the trip. pl