It's about time

The moon of Nisan ripens in the sky,
A dusty mirror showing us our sun.
A parting glance at one more year gone by,
with opportunities now gone and done.
And then to dwindle, ceding back the Night,
To stars that bleach the shadows she'd have cast,
contributing their dimmed, red-shifted light
originating eons in the past.
A festival of freedom, pent indoors

by yet a latest plague in the old mold.
While we retell the ten that went before
as if we'd lived through what transpired of old.
An opportunity shared to reflect
on what has gone before, and what comes next.

Helen II

The king of Sparta bored his trophy wife
Who ditched him for a smooth-cheeked Asian lad.
There followed twenty years of grief, and strife
that wreaked destruction on her boytoy's dad.
Peleides was moved to wrath, in turn;
a lesser man'd made off with his due prize.
For such a slight, Acheans' ships must burn
'til Agamemnon would apologize.
Fair Aphrodite earned the poet's scorn
his heroes should respond to something higher.
But from the sundry lands where they'd been born
more than sailed home would ride the soldiers' pyre.
Hermione gave more cause for civic pride;

her husband kept her duly satisfied.

Better

The senator who'd preached austerity
like Herbert Hoover arguing with Keynes,
belatedly, embraces sanity,
and government that feels a nation's pains.
Joe'd never been the brightest in his class,
and sometimes failed to credit others' words.
But he looks brilliant after such an ass
whose lies were often patently absurd.
His cabinet boasts experts in their fields,
'though most are cozy with the way things are.
Don't look to Biden for a new NewDeal;
He'll contemplate some  CHANGE--but not too far.

Liz Warren's acolytes contribute plans
intent on raising up a better man.

passages

Pristine white landscapes, stark in ice and snow
grow messy as the weather turns to mud.
It's necessary as the seasons flow;
The skiing can't be prime as fruit trees bud.
I'm not so trim myself as once I was;
The abs that once stood taut, now lurk within.
My chin bears shrubberies, where once was fuzz,
and everywhere I'm wearing too much skin.
The caryatid crushed beneath her stone
that Heinlein wrote about so movingly,
looks different now her fate's more like my own;
old texts transformed by our maturity.
My muddy, battered boots dry in the sun;
another metamorphosis, begun.

hands down

When cuttlefish can out-perform your pet
in problem-solving, and in self-control
Some want to question which of them gets et
and which enjoys the snug domestic role.
Domestication only fits the few
who understand a social hierarchy
The rest, we're prone to stir fry, bake, or stew;
We're picky in our hospitality.
This season, chordates seem to dominate
'though dinosaurs succumbed, we muddled on
But roll those dice again, a different fate
This time, a mollusc entry might have won.
Contingent evolution favored spines
but something else will rule, another time.