Spring Brings Wind

Wind picks at bits of garden.
Parchment frail shreds of old
pepper plants fly toward
a distant convention with new
hybrids beyond the horizon.
Over the next yard, kids
leap from trampoline to capture
moments of gale through shirts
that billow briefly. They believe
they have joined the wind,
then gravity and age returns
them to responsibility. Birds
carry their wish higher
into black dots absorbed
into air and wind and sky,
where my eyes can follow
no farther. My old desire
takes over, melds
with my own memory
of young blue futures.

Wife

Wife is a word that conjures
ghosts of gray television
screens that flicker
in memory, of mothers
in aprons making dinner
and herding children
through chaotic mornings.
In color, my wife
sits before a computer,
clicks through graphics,
in control of the screen
I don’t understand,
in a world beyond mere words.
She invents new ways
to manipulate images
that describe what we are
within a new box,
no plot to expect,
yet each display a moment
felt at the tips of her fingers,
where I can still tremble
in anticipation.

RICHARD DINGES graduated from the University of Iowa with an MA in literary studies. His poems have appeared or will appear in upcoming issues of Poetalk, Small Pond Magazine, White Pelican Review, Old Red Kimono, and Icon.

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