Odes to the Unlikely

By Fred Zirm

Ode to Prostate Cancer

Thank you for getting me
in touch with my feminine
side through hot flash
hormone therapy,
periodic bursts of
shitstorm sadness,
and, after surgery,
a single sphincter
left to guard the gate
against moist mortality.

Ode to the Mosquito

Praise be to all who thrive
without demanding our respect
with no apparent purpose but to
annoy and to infect. There is a
sort of purity to their whine and
bite and itch. So aloof from our
approval, they love it when we
bitch. They only crave a bit of
blood, when we have so much to
spare — plus an ounce of our
attention when they feel as
invisible as air.
Thus they rule the summer
with circumstantial pomp
’til drone–driven mad,
we pledge to drain that swamp.

Ode to the Night Light

Not those brighter bulbed ones
calling attention to themselves
and their own brilliance
when turned on each evening
with their seashell shades, cartoon
faces, or faux Victorian gaslit look,
only to burn out just when nature
calls and we need them most.

No, I prefer those pale turquoise
panels that are never turned off.
Dim but durable, they seem to last
forever, their more modest glow just
enough to tell the secure flat floor from
those steep stairs disappearing into the
dark, just enough to guide us safely
back to bed after we have done
whatever we need to do.

In Praise of the Erasable Pen

Less than indelible, it admits
all permanence is pretense anyway
while its eraser top proclaims
perfection is a ruse as well.
Mistakes have been, are being, will be
made. Aye, there’s the rubber that meet
the written word, promising to expunge
error after error so that even this poem
may be pardoned as part of a perpetual first draft.