Category: poetry
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Skin
SkinI felt the skin of my father—his thumb a soft shawlthat enveloped our intertwined hands.And when the embrace broke— how my tiny fingers traced the moss line of his skulluntil it became a familiar garden.How he would embrace mother, after-wards in her floral gown, so tenderly, thatI would sneak in later to smell the trace…
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A Late Valentine’s Day Poem
(After Ella Wheeler Wlcox)Love speaks:in the youthful flush of the first true kiss in the shy averting eye that hesitates to take this beautiful moment inwithout fainting.Love speaksIn the silent reserve of the heart’s tremblethe still and ache of hidden emotionsLove speaksin the ghosting of nearnessthe unshed tears that fears the expressing of joythat the…
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Evening Traffic
In my late hunger I listen to the swirl of night traffic, until it dies around the curb— recedes into remembrance,to that melting space inside— the sound matching the tempo of my lowest need,getting lost in the evening’s reflection—ice memories melting to water,everything moving to my traffic flow—to the single track of my inside voice.
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The Moon in Cancer
Exhausted, endured,my veins touch the moon’s hope—this faded celebration that keeps clinging to possibilities beyond—amongst these pallid faces,silent companions,the burdened looking down this sterile room,pale walls,who surrender to sleep so easily,unheedful of this moon childlistening to only the comforting whisphersjust ahead.
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Only Thistles Will Do
1 I eat thistles to do away with my hunger for green life,capturing in pixel pricks what my prying eyes can not evade.The forest offers no inheritance,every branch has its best name 2I wish to learn and know the work songs of smaller, silent things,blend not into the shrubs but rocks,the mutes of this dry…
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This cannot end with us
I fall back into the comfort of our once existence.every time the other sibs cry out your absence in black texts- how they MISS YOU SO MUCH.And yet, your stories are my memories.In their writing down I am there with you, so much.There with you -mom- in that old faded yellow Chevrolet traveling the black…
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Unfathomable Will
I found the city a pitiless thing.It smelled of steel, concrete and the bay.I use to sit on the sea wall that edged my old college condo, the one I sharedwith a black cat, and sing Otis Redding-skipping the whistling part of his songbecause my lips could never purse the right tune- and watch the…
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Nightfall
The ramshackled town falls quiet to the artist’s eye in the retreating light.The old houses will truce their aged lumber,antiquity, for the invading dark beauty of his creation.He lived here once as a boy, in the sadness of his angels,held hostage (he thought), by the catechism of church and steeple, becoming a refugee from sawdust…
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Gratification in time’s diminutions
Time’s diminishments adds its own beautyin gratitude for moments that are not ours:the child tiptoes into the mother’s bedroomand silently witnesses her comb her hair,later listens to her snore, transferring to them the transient lyrics of the song of life- the lines that survive the well of nights,the rose thorns to bloom in their mouthsuntil…
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Olvidada (forgotten)
My mother’s name is lost to everyone beyond her children.“She was beautiful.What was her name?”,others would say to me when shown her image hanging silently on the wall.In the chanting of it—their wind echoes my death back in a cloud of disinterested kindnessand muttered miseries. They know only their faces, the renamed mountains and rivers,the…
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The Bullet
In that living momentthe bullet goes right by me—and in between all my prayersand my eternal gratitude — the child behind me dies. “Why did it spare me and not him?”,I think over and over again—counting the lifetime of wishesthat now will never come true for him.—It goes right by me—penetrating present and future— —dreams…
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For Which It Stands
When the fence was finishedand properly white washed he wrote TRUTHall in large block white.on his side that faced the street. The next day, his neighborof many years, of which he knew only through casual hellos, painted (in bleeding red) TREASON on his. “God Save America,” the first thought ,“from this POS” as he drove…
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The Fifth Season
Under the bardo of the sheltering skymist and fog cleave earth from heaven.The green liminal land abscission’s itself- shivering swallows from boughs,causing the wiltering river reedto bend away from the first frazil ice—and the grazing horse to return to hay by following the frosting road back to the barn. The fifth season has arrived,sneaking in…
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Our Secret City
I wander through this secret citymapped in the words we only know,and we can only define.I am the citizen of you and you of me. Everyone we know drives bye,their cars filled with everything we ownflying out the window.The next vanishes into the mistbeyond the curb of what we once were.Or, is it, will be?Where…
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Ghosts in the Light
She remembers when the light was filled with silent ghosts. They would flicker in and out in the cigarette smoke of the theater, each frame an ashy wisp, a burnt offering.The story spooling out in the air was a familiar one.The sentiment caught in her heart and made her cry. Years later, she went back,after…
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Light
When I was a child light shone angels through my fingerscrowning my parents’ faces,blessing the simple tasks of theirs: table setting, pouring water—how it lit the world in my upturned smileand flowed through as I grewand how it followed me homeand stayed, even in the dark.Light was the water, earth,reflecting off every animal, every street,…
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Old Elm Haiku
Its leaves fold,curl inTheir grip yields to the cold windThe elm knows their loss
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Byobu- (A Japanese Screen)
He knows how to observe the heron in the twilight’s lonely inclusion-this blue dream that could vanish in flight if drawn too near—head, eyes, ears pulled forward following the flow of fish ahead— until it vanishes from his sightbehind a screen of slender reeds.
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True Sisters Know How to Stitch a Real Wedding Dress
My mother got married in a hand stitched dressthat each of her four sisters contributed a piece of their souls into the embroidered lace:a skein of swans in perfect v formation flew up her left sleeve, doves fluttered down her right, peacock trains fanned cardioid eyesof the most luminous white across her torso and bluebirds…
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On My Father’s House
On my father’s housethree slaves and six horsesdied when the old stable blazeda century and a half ago, and three union and two confederate soldiersslayed each otherin a forgotten skirmisha few years later.Their skeletons were foundtwo years after the war under an uprooted white pine.The county let the field return to forest,except for the old…
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Not Touched but Moved
Death has left its imprint on me so much I don’t know who is touching me inside anymore.Certainly it’s another presence,a voice apart from God.Or is God the sum total of all my known deaths?My soul is an oarless canoe afloat a lake of tearsseeking both initiation and response to steer it. Every death is…
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Little Father
Because I can not bury my father in the skyI burn him and spread his ashes on the ground.He loved birds yet did not feed them crumbs—just caught them in the color of their being.He would watch the mower plow the field,watch the hand fill the feeders with seedfeeling the tranquility of the man-made ponddrift…
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Lines Written After My 69th Birthday
I don’t get the feminine luxury of being twenty-five again every birthday past fifty.For a year I must live with the snide joke that my actual age is a congress of crows position illustrated in the karma sutra (page 69).Biologically I feel ten years older. Facially I look fifteen years younger. Every year there will…
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Living in Holy Terror
I thank lifeby livingby praying in stitches in the midst of evergreensaggravates- water This crippled world my every payer of me— of you
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Just So Simple
It’s simple- how to live, that is:live and die each day. Strive to live each morningas if it was the first:pull the colors around you to something that lives beyond the eyes. Treat the world not as Adam:something to be touched, named, collected, defined—but as Eve:the sun as an ingenue something young, innocent not to…
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Baptism on a Sunday Race Day in Daytona
It wasn’t a river just a pool,more of a hotub,set off from the sanctuary—and when I was eased into the waterI didn’t see God in the streams above.And I didn’t see her lost in the thunder of the racetrack just beyond the church. She was beyondmy line of sight,soaking up congratulations from the congregation.The pastor…
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Remnants of Hurricane Debby Passing Through My Tennessee Home
I am married to this earth, this field, this silence,even as the ocean offers itself.I walk it with my dog on his leash pulling restlessly ahead,biting at the frenzy scent trail he knows exists in the air.The woods beyond are gray.So is the sky. I hear— the echo of a trickling brook. My dog, inhales—…
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Before and After the Forklift
Before it was lowered over the broken city grid and became my second houseit was a meadow where the grasses grew tall.I watched the top shell of earthbeing moved and hauled away,saw everything leveled to sand, except a thick, distant forest with a thin stream that bled to the city park—and did not shed a…
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Wash
The white light of my bathroom reaches down through the steam,breaks yellow through the shower door.I scrub my skin, try to scratch loose all the sour, stinging memories inside,hope the grime would disappear in the porous mat under my feet.The steam flows like a host of ghosts into the vent fan- leaves behindonly the face…
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I’m getting giddy as the summer fades
I’m getting giddy as the summer fadesinto yellow fall, and the sky father grants me the comfort of storing his favor on my tongue- enough to close my eyes and know that it will last for the coming snow,the clean pure white that will eventually evaporate as one in the hibernating warmth always underneath.
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Dust
The young can not write about dust.They know only it accumulationson floors, shelves, dirty panes.Only the old know its subtle contours,the futility that comes with just moving it around.They know that the sun and stars are dust,schools of ash that follow all life’s currents andthat blossom the new fields under Grandfather Mountain.They bend with the…
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The Well-Trained Palomino
Again, today,the cowboy will closehis eyes and listen to the hoovesof wild horses all around himknowing that his well-trained palomino will take him homelike a loverwho knowswhat his lust wants— knows the way to him,through the black covers of that dark room—even as the returningcreates and then destroys the greening prairie, the chambray wind.
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Death Milad
As I get older I don’t dread death coming closer. It is closer. It will come as a newborn:seeding so long in me, that I would chide it for taking its time. I will not scream when it head comes out my body.I won’t even be amused by such a Hollywood trick.And when its held…
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Gentrification
After forty years the brownstones still seemed the same exceptfor the newer cars and the peoplein fashionable clothes walkinggolden dogs in chic comfort vests,all living in houses he couldn’t afford.He couldn’t believe he grew up herewhen the streets were livelywith black live matterand Gerald every summer out there with his rollerpainting fatsfix’s store front red.…
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My Thalassophobia
I play with the sand, crush it to a globe ofsun dried golden particles,until the thing in me that is the ocean calls to release it to the tideso full of the incessant sorrow upon sorrow of other’s tearsforced daily to kiss the shore-its roar constantly reminding me-the ocean hates the land-the ocean does not…
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Assembling the Crib
He lacked the skill to make it true, the crib, so he assembled it from a wordless diagram,an ark of 5 panels, 32 screws and bolts, 3 tools-tightening it just enough, until the memory of its creation fixed solid in his soul, well past the 1000 days of the child dreaming in it, the 30…
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A Hole in the Bucket
My mother was always a better singer than she was a cook. She may have burnt a lot of things but never missed a note, especially when Harry Belafonte came on the transistor kitchen radio-a voice so pure it made her cry with joy.“There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza,” he sang…
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The Pond
The pond was a quarry first, a blast furnace to the colonies where trains ran across its field.“Iron Ore Bed” map points called it.It was left to the rain when it dried up.When his parents bought the land twenty- five years before he was born, the field was overgrown and the pond was weedy and…
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Living the Half Life
The drought has made July linger. The air smells of sewer booty, sweetgum, sassafras, fescue, concrete and asphalt. On this long summer day when the light and heat decide to linger— parents let their children play well into the night on the community’s green. Their laughter and the croaking of frogs in the rention pond,…
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An Almost Practical Man
I don’t know if I am a practical person. I don’t obsess over the uses of a watch.It’s enough that it tick and the hands move forward, even if I don’t.When my dog paces in front of the door I know I must walk him. When he paws my lap, I must feed him. He…
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Getting Gentler
I’m gentle with the spaces I know and walk through. Every door knobs has fingerprints. The dust and air is full of ghosts,I make them free not by removing them but tidying them up into their own wandering space,letting them tell their stories so I can joyouslytell mine in the right place, time and words.…
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Extinction
Gray wolves howl invisible on the granite shorelinewaiting for the sea’s answer-standing tall on the headland,against a wind that allows no trees,signatures the stones with ageless storms—howling to know why this once lush placewhere endless fields of poppy intertwined with pineis now defaced with crops of suburban homes.Above, a falcon startled from its rocky perch…
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On Wonder
When I look at the sky its blueness mixes and cycles with thunder, lightning and rain.I notice, the vulture, content to feast on leftovers of once beautiful things, fly with the same majesty of the hawk.At night, I see the stars burn bright and smell the rain’s petrichor snake off the worn sides of Racoon…
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The Cleansing Cycle
i like to cling to the grimethe small grit of my father’s ashesunderneath my fingernails, the part of him that refused to fall to the rocks in the scatteringmy mother’s scented oil in her hair,her burning fat seasoning in the skilletstinging my nostrils and eyes leaving me seeing smelling less than my faultering earshis ash…
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Lullaby of Mother and New Born Child Abandoned in the Night
The Hudson sleepsand the clouds sweep over the moon. I promise little dearwith this small tear I will always love you.Sleep, sleep, sleeppeace, peace, peacethe promise I grant you. This song is the factthat your star remains intactin my heart, steady and true.The river’s lull,the moons’s full glowwill always pull us through.The path will be…
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The Fruits of My Labors
I hate mowing the lawn,hate the way it sends chinch bugsflying to the stars after the rain.In my dreams, however, I have lots of land,and delight in sculpting neat parallel rowswith my tractor- over and over, on and on,aerating the start of warrens and burrows for rabbits and woodchucks to finish their tunnels, for deer…
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Paying the Killers
My wife hears the weed man outside spraying the lawn.The next day it’s the pest control guy doing the foundation.He doesn’t come into the house to spray each room anymore. Just doing the outside is enough to keep the bugs away,says the pamphlet he leaves at the top of the steps.My wife comes from the…
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Invitatory
The birds sing of hungerthrough the pillars of lights that render the sky into beingthe great crease of You stumblingthrough onto my bedclotheskindling the room once morewith the face of peace found-outsatiating my starvation with the lamb’s diminutive thorna whole world waiting for Your Yes Author’s note: I usually start my mornings in prayer, asking…
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Ready!
The pain is gone and I am ready to write about everything beyond the fear,ready to bite into the muscle and bone of the world,to put away the dagger phrase,all the losses of my life,ready to live in hope’s recesses.I am poet enough to make you taste this hidden fruit,see beyond all the sutured sunsets…
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This Old House Knows Me Well
This old house painted in faded pride knows me well. I did not learn to walk here,but I did learn to leap- and do it mightily.The old dishes have been broken or thrown away,replaced by new ones with new owners. The taps stiff with old age and rust, surely have been replaced.The comfortable chairs, the…
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Marriage
After his deep illness was over he laid his body on hers—the length of his body on hers—all the sleepings, awakenings,fights, teacup and coffee mornings,their talks about everything and nothing,the plummets, the joyous-awkward silences—and with a tear, she beared his weight— until it was gone.
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The Things Is…
(after Ellen Bass)The trick is to love life,even when you have no stomach for it-even when your life crumbles to burnt paperin your hands- your throat choking in its ashes,embers turned tearing diamonds,weighing you down in grief’s obesity. “How can a body withstand this?”you will ask, cradling your facein your palms- your ordinary facenow, no…
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American Sonnet for My Roomba Soul.
I am old and have seen so many dawns that their beauty has no wonder.You see, my God doesn’t need to be perfect- just right more times than not, and not repeat his/hers/its creations so much, for me to be totally happy.The only thing that still amazes me is that I can navigate the dark…
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Oracles
My grandmother was my oracle, speaking stained insights in a Spanish I hardly understood at the time. My offerings were small but true: kisses, hugs, “I love you” on paper scraps translated by my mother for her knowing. It was as if I had written them in blood and it became a forever tattoo of…
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The Path
I come to the creek path near my house, the one my wife doesn’t like me to walk alone, for fear I might fall. I see mountain bikes riding through, a leashed triplets of dogs of Goldilock sizes their caregiver behind, struggling to contain their strides.My husky-chi barks at them, underneath a low growl in…
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Rollercoaster
When I was young I use to workout my death every time I rode a rollercoaster.I would give myself a glittery gold stickerfor not giving into the fear of the ascent,another if I did not pukeon the first big drop,three if I didn’t fall out raising my hands on turns.I would walk off feeling dizzywith…
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Sonder
I watch my shadow disentangle from the light to plead for its life with the oak’s penumbra and the rising sun, the stride of leashed dogs, bicycle wheels and othersilhouettes, evaporating in the park’s heat. In the artificial lake beyond, a one-man sculls theunobscured water, its paddles leaving clear streams behind.Five strokes later the craft…
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Fading Dreams of a Summer Nymph
jump off the rotting pierfloat face down in the lakeyour arms and legs spread far from your torsohold your breath and drift in the sun swirl near the edges under the tree canopiesuntil you feel the stones of others trying to prod you awakethey will watch you water dripping down your hair face necka beautiful…
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The Infinite Blue
the sky reflects my solitudeeverything above methe witness of my beingand things I left behind s. i. l. e. n. t. c. a. r. e. l. e. s. s.
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Olive Trees
One day, a man with his little boyin a wagon rested under the shady branches of an olive tree.They ate cheese and bread and when they were done they picked olives. When the sacks were full and they grew tired, they slept under the wagon.In the morning they noticed that the earth below themsparkled and…
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Wrack Line
I stay behind the wrack line, alone and ancient,only knowing the stillness my wounded feet allow. A Laughing Gull is revering the border left by the tide.Pass, the mate, thumbs its long bill through the leavings:dried kelp stripped of Brittle Stars, bottle caps, broken glass becoming now fine and deadly sand, mangrove twigs, unstraightened, eaten…
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Another Night’s Peace
(after Solomon ibn Gabirol) https://poets.org/poet/solomon-ibn-gabirolA pure heart in the moon’s smilethe heavens show their peace—another night’s rests from the mischance and mischievous love of moon and tide—the storm’s mantle that covers the moonand presses clouds and streams to burst—and pretenses luna’s death beyond the clouds,the mind’s falling, the soul’s weeping in the lie there is…
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Lost Words Still Unspoken
I’m at that age where death occurs regularlyenough that too many things are left unspoken—in the fall of life grief has unburdened their meanings. Animals know the definition of winds and rainsdescending mountain slopes and plush valleybut I know no mortal words for this silence.I hear it in the song of birds, see it in…
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Lightness of Age
In the moonlight, with grace and style. the old folks start their first time dance.Young, they watched winged flight, felt the warble with delight. In the patient beat of time, knew the stepof the meadow’s light.Now, snowflakes later, they finally dance with the wind, this special harvest night.
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An Old Cold Wives’ Tale
His wife turned cold. He touched her,hoping to die, at the least, maybe sleep. He did not die and he still could not sleep.Her coldness did not dry him out inside. He looked outside and noticed the street littered with other cold wives, demon hands holding them down in a web of rootssprouting from the…
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We only name the heartbeats shared
Alike heartbeats are called out in the evenings radiance:a slouch of bears awakening from a long slumber into the rising spring- the receding snow bringing the feast of a winter’s kill, memories of honeyed searches.a host of house sparrows creating nests in the corner eavesof every Elm Street roof, far away from the doors of…
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Transporting Fragile Materials
Today was the day to dispossess all the possessions in her room.I take measurement after measurement, only making things ghostlier.She was never one for order, or for keeping stuff in one place, holding on to these impressions until thinkings end, and the lights went out.Preserving this was her joy, all these fragile materialsshe held on…
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Adjustments
We all look alike in the dark, until our eyes adjust, and we see all the old, familiar forms.
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A Grieving Song for Unsung Lullabyes
Small steps, my child,in this wilding place.Sharp life everywhere,the spaces too. Steps, small steps, child, tiny prayers, hopes blowninto the trees, the faraway birds,taking safety in the chantof this golden butterfly’s rise,who drank from the splash of the summer rainin the chase of light atop the trees.Small steps, child, forward, sure and true.
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My mother use to say….
My mother use to say whenever I gave I her one of my poems to critique-my mother whose grace and beauty lingers like the reflection of sun on water-that my words remind her of the time in her youth when her life was honey.But I am not a bee and she was never a queen—…
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Duty Free
The van to the Cayman airport hits every pothole,shook every bone. I felt the ride in my teeth.My Dad bought some duty free Johnny Walker,a logwood trinket, a gift for his second set of kids.. A siege of harbor cranes are bobbing in the sway,waiting for the moon to dig its way into the sand.The…
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Monster
It must exist in the closet or under the bed with musty fur that throws jagged shadows, knows the fears that you keep intimately inside, be all mouth, claw, tooth, full of all hungers, and oh, it must be large, LARGE!- and THICK- the fallen image of a once ancient space, the guardian at the…
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I Inherited My Mother’s Nightmares
My memory is just bones-a clutter of heirloomsin the kitchen junk drawerwhere my mother’s soul is hidden in veils of tarnished tchotchkes.This women who refused to vanish has almost vanished from me,leaving these relics of unclaimed bones,this flatware she so carefully inscribed now rubbing out her initials in the consuming rust. There’s no place settingleft…
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I Think My Dog Needs a Bath
The dust of my house pirouettes to its own song, a dog-nosed existence in gray arrangements— the particulate matter of belly rubs and hocks stirring in a delicate assemblé of dog hair waiting for the start of heartfelt applause.
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The Maiden and Her Beauty
Beauty sunned itself on the stone walla slice of the light come early, then gone.But the maiden knew Beauty would stay near, hidden in the summer grasses.In the morning she went to the stone and found Beauty uncoiled, slumbering.The maiden took Beauty into her own hands.and opened the silken feed sack, she’d brought.Beauty poured itself…
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Reimagining Eden
The snake: nothing more than an sunning iguana Eve: the dove settling in the flight of pigeons Adam: a beach bum washing himself in a fountain Expulsion: the agreeing fireworks of fallen angels Cain: the running child with the flowing hair Abel: the fool blinded when he prayed in the eclipseGod: A host of drunken…
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Unfinished Poem
(after Mark Strand)In the drifting of the moon over the waters she saw a past fear jumping to the future : Rain was falling on her husband’s grave, while this poet was moving into her house, in the rain.In her old room the poet was writing a poem abouta woman who strolled under trees and…
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This stove I love so much.
My wife’s kitchen is her solar systemwhere she never burns out.The heat of her stove has been sizzling for more than fifty-five years.When she cooks, she’s at her most beautiful.I find nourishment orbiting her star.
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I Hear the Gapped Heart
My past is blind, locked in its own code.The sunlight is the only gold I own.Grief, birth, the scent of night rain,time’s count down is my inheritance.The wind that lifts the sea, leaves it’s salt drying on my fingers- a dream salvaging the tideline’s gleanings for things oncegenerous, intense, yet lush and lean. I hear…
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Unsent Letters and Messages
Our best messages are in the letters we never write.They’re the ones meant for the grave with no official seal.The ones in your voice but not your definition.All of them meant to be faceless,placeless, sleeplessa whispher of the night,the rain, the streets,all tomorrow’s dusk.The ones that become maps made up of what always been missing.
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a ladybug, cicadas, bumblebees,a butterfly and moths: portrait of a marriage in stasis.
(Poem should be read horizontally to show original formatting)The ladybug climbed the porcelain salt column,on my breakfast table, heading to a nowhere heaven with confidence, its beauty rounding and rounding the rim- delivering the message of herself in its tiny being. I admired this bug that did not crave the darkness,or need not crawl headfirst…
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Well of Souls
(after William Erickson)The well sings of all the fallen children.The song is sad and long for there are many,but it’s also beautiful, for the children sing to the din of stars above.It’s the song of the echo of love, a song that grows, low and soft and secretbuilding a staircase to the heavensthat rises above…
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Woman, Snake, Man
Because of Eve men assume there’s a snake inside women,a dark internal dream state where she lives beyond the mere form that exists.They believe that to know a women you must enter her fully, but thatdenies her an identity beyond flesh and sex and sighs.Some men see women as dreams(come true)— and when she presses…
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Epithalamion
Our bodies exist to bewritten on by one another.Your hand in my hand is inscribed in my thumb. In the clasp, our hearts whisper each other’s name.Even In the embrace of shadows our story lives.It’s the story of lovers and friendsstill waiting for the right wordslike a thumbprint lifted from the panes from the gathering…
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My Planet
Instead of a ticket to mars, I like one to my own planet.It would be Goldilock’s right,with love as far as the horizon.beautiful as my best imaginings.It would have conformable chairs,creatures of my rainbow bridge, theaters with the best movies and plays,schools fostering the best of imaginationcreating great philosopher and poets.There be no geography and…
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Before Entering into the Morning
(after Brenda Hillman)Before entering into the morningI shrug off chemo memories,swallow the bitter taste of other ancient ashesin my mouth.1 minute 30 seconds on defrost,the flip, another 1:00 on high,the microwave sanctifies my biscuit wrapped in a paper towel shroud.My dog paws at my feet, beggingfor the meaty morsel that I will solemnly cut in…
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Living With the Zoomies
I wish I was my dog, keeping the scent ofspring sunshine on everything forever inside.How I envy this creature that knows sky is the color of all the aromas of nature,that beauty is the crush of every nose that breathesin its reeling sunlight.It must be so delicious for him to sniff the scintillating buzz of…
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Little Things
I gift you all the little things of my heart both old and new.Hold them gently in your hands until they start to coo.Then, release them to the wind.
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Amongst the Monuments
One day I will commit the greatest heresy and spread my father’s ashes over my mother’s grave.I will sit, with them and all these other named and nameless cloud covered bodies stretching to the horizon—a final gesture, maybe, but surely a goodbyeto how they came to this place, and how I must leave when the…
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All the Common Desolation Among the Cruelest April Blooms- A Wasteland Homage and Parody
[April is the cruelest month….The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot]It’s almost April and the trees will be shedding winter’s desolation in the canopies of the late afternoon sun.The golden few, the sheer blue above know the ritual dead will be shredded byhoof, foot, beak, talon and claw.Only the poet, the one who lives apart,will mourn and…
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Touch, Please
Every one in your spaces will dieand you will never know if you willbe the last to touch them.Most will get our ragged stubs,a few, palm to palm caress, fewer still, your fingertips brushing their lifelines.They’re all going to die. That last touch is all theycan take with them beforethe crack in heaven splitsand they…
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Relax
Look, it’s inevitable,bad things are going to happen.Your dog will die before you,probably both your parents too.You’ll leave the refrigerator openand the chicken will go bad and your wife will chew you out for it.You’ll wash the colors in the wrong temperature and they will shrink to the size you wore when a boy.You’ll give…
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Fat
As I undress, I watch my flesh swell.I notice the sheaves of my hips,my marshy belly rivered with surgery scars—and I fall in love with the acreage of my life.The four years, that I unraveled into cancer,I do not miss. Nor the weight of my happinessshriveling into a stick man- vacating skin and bone turning…
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Remembering First Snow
The snow in its gloaming has been heaping field and highway with deep, white silence.The pine, fir, hemlock are draped in ermine,the poorest twigs ridged in deepest pearl.From the shed’s roof a rooster crows and stiff rails now down, flutter to the ground.The silent father listens to the noiseless workof beating snow birds whirling by.…
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Another Day
I am at that age where I am relieved that it’s day again every time I awake. Instead of crushing time between my hands, I am content to let it take shape, watch the day’s soft eyes blink the hours away, help take it by the hand when the night says it’s time to go.
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Bumper Crop
Some of my poems are seeds,some of them are weeds.All of them sprout everywhere,for good-bad, over your living things. I never know which will be seedy or weedy.I don’t preserve them between sheets of paper.They’re not museum specimensor even a nicely cultivated garden.They’re cast in the wind for anyone to have them. The ones you…
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White Egret
There it stood, the white egret—scripture as animala saint’s skeletonrising from the weeds.It burst into flight. For the boy watching from the riverbank it was glorious.He wanted to say something wonderful, but his profound thoughtsfrittered away in the simple wisdom of wings annunciation. Soon, the egret was high,almost into forgetting,a flicker in a heap of…
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Gills
When I was a kid I convinced myself I could breathe underwater.I even dreamed I would join a lap of cod and swim all the way to Antarctica. I would never get tired of navigatingtides, forging rivers, crossing gulfs. I was sure if I did surrender to the waters I could not be drownedor become…
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Poet’s First Bath
Falling into the soothing waters all around his infant body- the gurgle of words, meanings to reach with his hands until his mind is ready to explore them, the possibility of something so beautiful that he would spend his life defining her, the knowing of her every single word.
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Play Ball! (Haiku)
This big green diamond waits for these boys of summer to make it sparkle.