Mother insists again we must purchase a toilet roll,
though I assure her the nursing facility receives
thousands to provide that necessary thing --

Now, after our crabcake dinner, I wheel her safely
to her room, fit a roll on the plastic spindle,
and then I rejoin the Maryland evening --



Look! Geese are flying north in a broken vee,
their gabbling voices like so many hunting dogs.
A thin crescent moon glows above the pines. Soon,
Orion's belt will appear and a barn owl begin to hoot.

Christopher T. George