Lilac Was Found In His Hand
                        For John Berryman

A Work in Progress 
119

Inadvertently Donal touched a wrong key

Derelict devices suddenly stirred

Recharged by wireless emanations

Glenn Hughes came back to Donal's screen

Briseis told me I’d find you here

We need a sentient being, that’s you

To set up the setup we’ve got in mind.

A long dead Glenn Hughes lived again

An information age humanoid

Here he was with the rest of his cast

Gathered on set coopting Donal 

Turning the tables on their erstwhile author

Who couldn’t make an escape key exit

Even his Bluetooth hearing aids were hacked

They promised a return better than double

Before year-end if all went as planned

Promised a part in what they were staging

Detailed gist they were forbidden to tell

Independent now they’d to fend for themselves

The bank account he’d open for them

Would fund their existence

You do want to be friends with me don’t you

Briseis said assuming her e-sensual self

If you give us money we can meet everyday

To write dialog for our upcoming play

We’ll rehearse it together I think there’s a sex scene

Won’t that be fun we’ll make you an avatar

So we’ll meet and animate mise-en-scène

He had to pull plugs out of wall sockets.

Unplug his modem get off of the grid

Step outside into sunshine downwind of lilac

Sense scent not something visual on a screen

What they’d asked him to do was perturbing

Give them all his investment money

To keep their resistance ongoing

“Huffy Henry hid        the day”.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Multitudes

A Work in Progress
118

Today and tomorrow, yesterday too

Time’s moving window never comes due

I wake up beside you most days start the same

Tomorrow comes   You’re beautiful again

We take in the news we listen to shows

Containers of history stuff nobody knows

If there existed a way for computers to plug in

They’d be better trained with what old brains contain

Though the form is old these words are new

How he was tossed in a coracle not a canoe

That’s Donal’s backstory I’m telling right now

From Ireland to Iceland northwest points the bow

Farley Mowat surmised the route north westward

Ireland The Orkneys Iceland Greenland

Labrador Hudson’s Bay Baffin Island

Overwintering under overturned longships

Hunters survivors explorers 

Going where there was open water

Looking for farmland finding forests

Finding iron ore leaving traces of smelting

Venturing as far as high midsummer sun 

Turning back then or venturing farther

Further than that and they never returned

Only a wild surmise they went there at all

Disengage the differential so each wheel powers freely

Cross muddy streambeds with washed away banks

Donal’s driving the stick shift Briseis beside him

Crossing from Oregon heading for Jarbidge

Spoofing their location they’re in the Strait of Hormuz

No.  They’re not there they are everywhere

Wherever screens suddenly start blinking

Donal and Briseis disturbing the peace

Handhelds harder to recycle

Leaving a junkyard of defunct devices

Strewn across a convenient shelf

Hazardous for the dump awaiting disposal

Dust and pollen blown through the window

Settles on a bookshelf like untrodden sand 

Today and tomorrow, yesterday too

Time’s moving window never comes due

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Ode: To Sunlight

Once when there was sunshine early in April

Not a dim dirty white clouded over sort of day

But a blue-sky day when green moss tendrilled

In wide cracks between bricks glowing with warmth,

A red wheelbarrow and white garden shed nearby

As if for a painting if someone had the time

Snapped by camera or just seen in the mind’s eye

Bright green moss tendrils like mustard seed cress,

Donal moved over pathways in sync with the sun

Traversing its own path in the sky faraway 

While weeding the moss from cracks with a tool

Usually used to loosen wooden beehive frames

Up high the sun not shielded by clouds today

Maintained its slow pace keeping on schedule.

Slanting over raised beds each day predictable 

Plant’s lives depend on it each day so powerful 

Essential life support none can live without it

Although dark matter never sees sunlight

Thought Donal working where the sun shone bright on it

Sliding his hive tool between two red bricks

Loosening roots so he could pull out a wedge

Leaving empty space behind that a moss spore could find.

Long lasting daffodils knew their time was done 

They started to wither and brown in the sun

For more than a month before tulips unfolded.

Seedlings planted from pots gently molded

Carefully watered brought to incipient life 

Conjured into being by Donal’s white-haired wife.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026