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Leaves were falling from the great oak at the meadows edge, falling from all the treesthis cold cold night.So many have fallen off,so many were torn off,that the new buds to come were but a memory of a sun that once shoneand gave them warmth,warmth they needed again.They’ve fallen down unaware of the secretblooms yet…
Dead love was the grief that brought her down.She buried him oft in her heart’s graveat night ‘neath the Noble fir near her front door.Dreams had him smiling wide-eyed in the morn. Her da followed rudely into her futureseized by fevers and chills she couldn’t shake.She left him boggin’ near the auld grapeuntil he popped,…
In indifference comes my winter solstice—my life now groping more dark than day— just one less even second now—to a temperate gloom and a forever stasis. I neither want to live shorter than my mothernor any longer than my father—an oh so happy mean is just my preferred destiny— death at eighty on an overcast…
I feel my father’s ashes on my tongue.His strange death sitting on the edge of my teeth humming that oldSpanish balladthrough the night’s fog. The song you so hate,yet love.He sings it in his own perfect pitch.He sang it for my mother years ago.I hum it off key, hearing his lies.
I don’t remember their names yet I witness their shattered tree being placed in the old bent stand.Its wind-shorn branches supplicate to the sky. Placed beneath its boughs area Red Cross box and stained pics, the bluegrass relics of father, mother and infant son— all exiles from my wife’s side of heaven, huddling like a…
Read More "The Gifts of the Magi: An O’Henry Christmas Poem"
Each of their syllables floats into the ether leaving memories of little talks, of things not said, until the letters separate away. mother to other drifting away other, other- “Momi, donde esta?” Father ather falling further down at her, at her- “Papi, quien eres tu?” They didn’t fall. They were thrown to leave me without…
The monarch flutters above the ash and in its black and orange beautyexists all day and night. It flies up to meet the sun,the gentle maternal hand of life lived in the light.Only the scent of milkweedlures it down to ground for the paternity of feasting and breeding.In its flight between earth and sky, I…
Not far from the cove, the stones worn smooth from the tides weeping, the salted breeze, removedfrom all tranquility, is the grand windowed house. The ashes will be spread on the beloved soil,the October browning still green to cover this assembly of forgetfulness. The house awaits the noises of the feast,the jeer, the final clearing…
pal·i·node/ˈpaləˌnōd/nouna poem in which the poet retracts a view or sentiment expressed in a former poem. My father stands in my memory seriousness, good intentions intact. He has shifted in my time from distance to closeness, shed his professional ambition and all his focused successes to enter my life still wearing his white coat and…
