Category: poetry
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The Fairground Closes for the Night
The whirligigs above will stop,fold and rest their metal wingsfor the night.The cars and those in them will not collide.Gravity returns, granting peace and stillness from the movements of the day. The weary attendants will slump their shoulders,sighing in relief.So too, will the teddy bear in the claw machine once the current shuts off. Bullets…
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The Candy Coated Giraffe Who Did What He Pleased: A Child’s Poem
The candy coated giraffe who did what he pleased one day suddenly got his long neck caught in a tree. “Please, please! Help me! I can’t get free!, “he pleas to all the wondrous animals floating in the breeze. Try as they must, they could not help him very much. Chirp, chirp, chirp they fuss,…
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New Year’s Eve Comes and Goes
A friend I’ve know for but a year came a knock, knock, knocking at my door.He was cold and thin, and even though he wanted in, I did not open the door.He was once such a grand delight but now he was so so such a bore. Knock, knock, knock, his knuckles rappedagain, again. I…
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At the Barbershop
At the barbershop my hair sings The Ballad of Long Locks “Cut it off. I’m done with it. It gets in my way.” Thus, I’m kept alive with regular haircuts.
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The Bench
When the oak fell in the stormhe carved a bench for her.He placed it in the best grove shade asa reminder the bench once bloomed.Still, rays of light split through the leavesand the bench, even in winter, was warm.Here she knew fully his silent love for her,even after he fallen silent, buried nearby.Eventually, it became…
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Walking the Beach With My Wife and Dog
This beach walk like all the others will be erased soon,but for nowthere is a line or two for us.
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Childhood 3: Riding Dark Horses Bareback and Barefoot
The boy wants a horse.The dad gets him a horse—a bronco he was told which use to be a thoroughbred,a black wind of a creaturewho barely tolerates the old, cracked saddlefrom the dad’s jockey days.It takes two track hands to hold the reins, to keep the stallion stillwhen the dad addresses him . In the…
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Childhood 2: Creating Wonder
Only a child believes that a jar of released fireflies will become stars.That the calico teddy bear watchingthe still lake with you knows every creature in the 100 acre woodsThat the too big straw hatwill never blow off your headwhen running through a field of lilacs.That the biggest fish ever caughtis the blue origami one…
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Childhood 1: Visiting the Land of Make Believe
This is not a true story but the expression of a wish of a poor Bronx girlon Christmas Day. There were Christmas gifts but they flew out the windowin a drunken father’s rage.There was a menagerie setwith a Jesus in a manger,cows, sheep, pig, donkeys,two collies, a pony and a camel,but all was shatteredto pieces,…
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Missing Prayer for an Abandoned Sacred Place
The brown wagon that took the children to the jubilee leans wheel-less against the old chapel walls.Weeds striving for the light arise from the black moldy nave from narthex to transept. The hymnals in the rotting pewsgrieve a living and active voice,the echoes of services preached.There is a sheet over the pulpit,a shattered virgin in…
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The King’s Rumination
Befuddled with thought the king sought the oracle. “Count the sands, calculate the seas,” she said. Of the king’s future,she spoke nothing. Henceforth, he contented only in his nightmares.
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Snow Chapel
The world exists to remind us to see: the snow chapel in all its brightness— soul’s landscape asleep, forgotten, until bells remembering.
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Our Pets Know His Light
The cat and the dog sitting in the snow, admire an amazing singular heavenly glow.Together they form the world’s great halo.
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The Village
Flake by flake the snow came The village was already asleep. Lights were twinkling softly bathingall in the Lord’s heavenly peace.
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Mirror, Mirror
The light Light the in the mirror mirror in the casts its casts it light lights, on the light not the light that has been that’s been cast away, cast away, that reverse reverse that to what is which is too real. real.The looking glass proclaims only the life that is in its light. Life…
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Riding Home: A two version poem
First version:The mare bears me home in that graceful stride that makes me feel better than I am, not broken, small, but whole. Second version:out of the earth come the cowboy and mareflawed and aching and wronged but well and glad to be riding home Let me know in the comments which version of Riding…
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Dancer in the Mirrors
In the spinning mirrorsthe dance is hers. She leans a little more,to the glow.The balancing pointonly she sees.
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The Water Calls Us Down
The water call us down.She names us and we call her ours. Down we goand we sleep.Awakenedwe remember- that blue pool-the one with no bottom.
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The Rainforest Lives With Our Ghosts
It sings of falling water, until the roadcuts a scar. Its earthlives with our ghosts.Trees must bear our names.
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Sad Geisha with Parasol
Parasol blossoms float to her porcelain skin caressing her thoughts Ebony tresses cover the tears salting scar red left behind The sun is hidden the samurai is silent under bed
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New York Skyline
In the mist, black granite, linked scales melt away. From afar, the tinkle of a music box is heard. The street pleads a prayer to broken sky. New York awakens.
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The Farm
Crops suck rain from the sky, swallow the smoldering sun. The land absorbs all in waves of gold. The morning rooster crow recycles. The farm is as it should be.
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Still Life With Peaches
They had evolved to be split midway by thumbs, juice pooling to lifelines in cupped hands a sacrifice to be sniffed, tasted— sweetness cursed, the lustful last bite of life.
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Dogs Bearing Gifts
No greater love a dog has for youthan to return all your holiday shoeson Xmas day so so thoroughly chewed.
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From the Manger the Child Gazed
Above the sky in the Bethlehem dark the Father noticed the child in the manger gazing up at his Father’s greatest creation.
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Ivy for Holly (a children’s poem)
Ivy for Holly,Michael and you.Garland for Grandma,a sprig for Santa with cookies two. All God’s blessing for world renewed.
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The Holly Grows Green (a children’s poem after Shakespeare)
The holly grows evergreen.The ivy does too.Through long winter’s blast they blossom holy and truelike God’s love for you.
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Going Up the Stairs She Heard
She heard her children going slowly up the stairs of the old grand house draped in linen solitude. On the peacock treadsthey chanted discoveries,whispered mysteries she intimately knew.
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Mask
The soul’s happinessis uncovered when the beautiful white death maskslips off the face.
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Chop Suey
(Ekphrasis on the Edward Hopper painting.)In the white tablespace between themshe thinks only of theodds and ends danglinginside. The hissing tea kettlehushes the words in front, the love chatbehind.Note: choppy suey comes from the Chinese tsap sui for “odds and ends”.
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The Green Gown
The green gown rippled downin the breath and shadow of the willow branch, invisible noon and nightto all searching ships.
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The Last Tree
The last tree sheds its leavesin the barren dry knowing the breezewill breathe its revival.
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Sheltered, I Am Now
No terror seedsin my soul. The gentledust of my mother remainsall around me. Her old comfortssnuggle away any regretsuntil our heavens meet. Not soon,but soon enough I will remain with you.Why will I decay in the crypt when only smoke can rise to joy?That cloudy mass that rises from burning,burns tears beyond the wear of…
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The Singing Honeyeater
The Singing Honeyeater fell following the shadow of my hand on the wall.Right wing coveringits breast, it fellin full song.In a splash of last rain,the shadow of my handit knew was not sky, it fell.And,in the speckled evaporation of a mute sky, its last notes fell forever inside me.
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Nourishment
The buried placenta knows not the suffering of the womb,only that it once nourished.
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A Short History of ”The Troubles”
Jack held his da’s old black revolverhigh in his hand, even with his face.His fingers barely reached the trigger.In time, it would be an easy squeeze,a proper squeeze for a proper Doherty,but for now, he would wipe its barrelacross his face like a fillum gangster.The soot of coal and Sperrin spit clung to Jack’s face,…
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Song for My Departed Sharma
You were held close to mommy’s cheston that last day full of walks, belly rubs,and lingering in the rays of perfect sunshineand us delighting in so many kisses from you.You were named to remember the good boyswho left us seven years before you came- and as your head unwillingly left mommy’s chestand yielded to gravity…
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Last Day
She exists a clam shell folded in the middle of the bed, her bedspread forming a waterfall of somber gray tears. She hears her daughter shut the door, probably for the last time, and step into the clear, bright light all around.Yet the clam mother will remember it as a dark and overcast day. She…
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Walking Along the Seashore Without My Mother
The old negative of her with her hair pinned backI hold up to the horizon and see it fade into the waves.It was the one taken through the filtered window of her black car,her face half in night and half in day.Behind, I hear the echo of the sand cave.In front, the roar of swirl…
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Lifeblood
The new blood runs over the old scars on her wrist,the unforgiving crucifix held tight in her palmwhile the unwrapped fish stinks on the table.
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Phorcys Claims Medusa for the Sea.
Medusa’s soma falls into the Aegean,almost into the fatherly arms of Phorcys,almost close to the sobs of her sister gorgons,their monstrous grief now deformed into the cursed shriekthat is human terror, that is the horror ofall human existence.Her soma’s splash releases a thousand stars upward to the moon.Perseus looks awaylest the Ohia viper curlsheld high…
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The Road to the Sea
When I was a young boy my mother drove us in a white Plymouth to a road that ended even with the sea. The last tenth mile was paved seashells mortared with beach stones, the low shoulders no higher than my ankles- the carapaces of turtles, crabs, lobsters boiled and eaten over a century. She…
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Mirror Images
Today, in the car, you see the moving imagethat always traveled with youand was really always with you. Do you squint beyond the image of yourself reflecting back to you in the glass to see the church beyond?or do you concentrate on just the road ahead and the cars in front?But now you noticethrough the…
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The Slaughter
After 5 years Fatima hugs her sister Almaunder a gray sky.The wind whips Fatima’s kerchief backforming a mask that matches Alma’s dull stare into the browning field all around.Alma feels only the roughness of the green blanketwrapping itself around her,sees the small farm in the distancewith farmhandsloading cattle into the slaughter carand remembers the heifer’s…
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City Noir
The caged birds of unrealized dreamshang heavy from steel and glass skiesstooping the walk of pedestrians.They think it’s a heavy rain but it’s their anodized desire fracturing into a thousand feminines/masculinesin the windows all around them.Their noir has orange hair sirens with Klint faces blowing gray smoke, or the Private Dick who lives on past…
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Riding the Bus at Night
The night bus cradles the weary and those waiting for the dayonly those who know the city’s cocoon can appreciate the hustle and ritualof its morning butterflies orthe way speed blurs tenement lightsinto a stained glass display—diffused halos of red and green,blue and yellow.To ride the night busdemands you living with the shadowsmovingwith you,behind you,staring…
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Christina’s World Knows the Ocean
Christina imagined the ocean beyond the withering grass, the yellow hilltop, the gray house just above her vision. On the shore she would lift herself up without the fear of falling. Her hair was swept back by the considerate breeze. Her white dress flew backwards resisting the wind’s effort to delineate her body. The tidal…
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Things Just Caught Up With Her
It wasn’t all the popcorn, hotdogs, candy eaten in the dark that killed her.Those things just caught up with her.It wasn’t all the boxes piled highand then tumbling on her that cracked her head and made her a corpse.All that junk just caught up with her.It wasn’t all those clothes hung up on clotheslinesstrung through…
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Knowing the Face of the Land
If you wish to know who really owns the landlook at the faces the windhas carved into the mountains.
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The Red String
Her mother’s tale of the red string foretold that Miko and Makoto would be together, tied little finger to little fingerby a taut invisible blood line.What she didn’t tell her was that the line would fray, break, need to be retied over and over.In their wedding photos Makoto would stand stiff,sincere in his white suit,chrysanthemum…
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The Fitting
When her maman died Marie flew ten hours to the ancient French village where the houses steepled the church,their mansard roofs brown from neglect. The Weeping Willow in front of maman’s weathered hovel did not match Marie’s feelings. It never did. Inside the furniture had aged into antiques.The handmade chaiseswith ladder backs and unadorned ticking,French…
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Three Parables Stretching for Dignity
The blind do not need blindfolds.They wear shades just for useven as we turn our eyes away.We give them a stick to see.The one-legged woman stands just as tall as the two-legged man.The blind man in the wheelchair can go far,but he can go twice as far if he holds on tothe frame of the…
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Shadow Geometry
at what point do shadows becomenumbers and numbers become dustis it when sunlight and moonlight crossthe eye into our anatomical darknesswhen the zero circle helixes into shortexistence a rose, a cell, a dying memorywhen raindrops no longer liquefaction, leaving umbrellas a meaningless propor the grid that passes over unnoticed during the slow, long ride to…
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Life’s Moments
The child looks out her toy windowand imagines her adult self sailing on the blue ocean of the old hat box that holds her communion veil. Her childhood dances alone along the berm’s dawn light as the sloop plies onto the sand.They hug and gallop horses bareback in the vanishing mistwhile Tess, the sea turtle…
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Irreversible
The oceans recede,its pylons exposed.The great elephants rust in the junkyard they fell when Chukwa shifted.Even his severed legs can’t hold up the earth-sky.The sea grass stiffensto a verdant wave,curl exposing the horizon.The ivory house built on the beach(the one with the bench in back where children playedand the family picnicked,the one with the red…
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I See Only Silence
it’s easy to know where the leaves were before they fell,what her lips tasted after the caress of the loving hand,what was in the crib rusting in the forest of the night.Only the twins know why they nod to each in the fog,the thing the hound bays for in the lake of stars,what the alligators…
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A History of Dying Spaces
Only my grandmother came home to die.Her centuries old home was built with a birthing and dying room,two small bedrooms, a library and as was custom, no parlorShe went through the process of lifein private but away from the spaces entirely reserved for birth and death.Home was a place where she ate,sat still, stared and…
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Paramythology
If you accept the appleyou must accept the bite,the lips that bit the flesh,the legs that climbed the tree,the eyes that looked and lustedfor what was in between and abovethe white cleft rising in the speckled light,all the crucifixes after and the rising flags since. Pondering on the origins of poetic archetypes, religion, and the…
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Adhesion
In Vatican City a cardinal walks resolutely forward, his red trainflowing behind longer than a bride’s.It’s silhouette passes by the open windows of the atelier reflecting crosses over the bodices of thetailor’s latest scarlet creations.Another black smoke day rises from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Blood shadows slowly abandon St. Peter’s square for the…
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Two Wheels
Two circles, two triangles locked in against a railexist as geometries of mobility in immobility,movement stuck in a silence never intended.The front wheel swings in the direction of desire,forward progress the only direction it knows.Yet, it seems impossible that it stays upright.Without a kick stand it falls easily into the dust.Without a peddler executing a…
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Night Beach Couplet
When the color goes away for the daythe night beach revels in the shadows play.
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At Sunset
Your death must mean just enough not to curse the day you were born,to stand by the water’s edgeand not want to swim with stonesuntil the first dark wave takesme under in a fetal pose,sinks me down in the last breath,the clear waters almost your ghostpushing me back, allowingme to walk away.Of course, I will…
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The End of the Journey
My grief sails through joy refusing to tack the line of others-straight, plain, flat and so so still-the reason why I love it so.No haven of pine and sand,just mangrove rootsgnarled but knotted strong,holding the beach against the hurricane .That it stands and so do Iis not a measure of what I’ve known, or even…
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Quotidian Life
A bicycle splashes over a puddle and its aurareflects down the streetlightspraying halos on the umbrellasof the pedestriansthat pass under.Down the blocktwo stop signson opposite streetsboth signal WALK,letting the crisscross of the quotidian begin.This moment it’s a blue umbrella scissoring around a red one.Earlier a chihuahua in a poncho sniffs and wants to nip at…
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Stage Directions for the Theater of the Absurd
Act One (The one and only act of which there is no other.)Vladimir and Estragon having waited for Godotlong enough decide to stand up and walk home. They dust themselves off. A boulder rolls on stage.It stops in front of them. Enter a sweaty Sisyphus.Vladimir: Godot!Estragon: Godot!Sisyphus: Not Godot. Sisyphus. Godot told me you two…
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The String is not the only Thing that Holds the Kite in the Air
If kites are nothing but a cross on a sailthey can only rise.Yet, the child running with all his joyin the brown fieldon a cloudless day will hold the string taut, thinking it’s up to himto keep the kite in the air and never let its line cross the path of birds.Today, he will learn…
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Getting It Right
I try on my death suit regularly, and even after my cancer surgery, it’s still too long in the arms and legs..This year I did manage to find a comfy pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2that don’t make my toes numb.in a few years I will come into a nice inheritance and will…
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Living With the Fog
The fog covers the bridge all around.Above the day blurs night. Belowships prowl slowand uneasy lines.Thosedriving or walking throughwill remember the cry of the sky,the sobs of those tiny sirensbelow warning away,warning away,those who come too close to touching themin this blindness-long after the light has returned and their soulshave safely reached the other side.…
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The Lone-some Cowboy
His horse whinny’s while waiting outside the church with the blue cross and tin roof.The loyal herding dog panting on the corner,listens to the lulling cows in the pasture,heels for the hand signal to start the gather.In the center of the town square,a marble angel atop a high stone column,inches below a cross of electrical…
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Facing the Stars
I see the starsand feel I don’t exist,that my grief is the only thing that has meaning. The grief that welcomes my own eulogy, reading my headstonein the decaying light,reminding me that I am mortal and must die,dissolve to indistinguishable dust and dirt, a man, an, a.The glowing cheeks of my parentsjust another flaw among…
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The Box That Holds My silence
At bedtimeI sit in my chairand turn offmy long lived hearing aids,putting them in the pine box with the gold leaf claspand a brown phoenixcharred into the lidThe traffic outside dies,the rasping of my dog is silent,my wife’s snoring is muteand the world is so so quiet now. In the morning only the light streaming…
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Celestial Fission
Stardust, the hardest thing to hold on to,forms our guardian angels,the ones that sway us to our favorite tree,settling each branch in a sugary light.We scamper towards it, all the dust of sun and star reflecting golden in our faces,adorned in the red and white regal robes of our younger self.God particles surround us,their soft…
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The Lesson of Our Puddles
Oceans are formed from the dropping of our tears.and in it we must all drown,knowing only the cold and the slow driftingaway of our flesh.We watch our fathers live extraordinary livesbut die ordinary deaths.It sinks our hearts downin the gush of a thousandmemories past and memories to be named,into expectations of what was andwas suppose…
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Lallo Dreams in the New Ways
(I liked the word baize so much that I created a poem entirely around it. Lallo assembles the town in his head all in shades of green, white and gray—grass, walks and streets scarring storieson the old sacred hillsof high steel hutswith Bianco Carrara walls and long hallsfilled with plains of baize tables, silver machinesand…
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We Need to Look Longer
The eye feels the light, the lens knows the truth:The children silentunder a blue tarpamongst the rubble— their little backpacks still on their backs offering the hope they still might stand upthen, the beat—and the realization that will never happen.You want to look awayyet you can’t. You must look closer.You must look for longer.Again and…
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Pact
I make a pact with my younger other self, my familiar in the crosswalk, the boy staring back not longing to be me,wondering where all that nice black hair went in our shadowed time and unwanted trusts, vows not to be our parents and just our mirrored selves. In spite of me/to spite me he…
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KAROSHI (Death by Overwork)
The boxes pile high above his head,beyond his ability to count them,beyond his ability to move them.He will work them. More twelve hour daysfor not enough pay. No days off until KAROSHI-death by overwork. He asked his family to bury him,in his small living room ,in front of the flicking embersof the big flat screen…
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Losing Track of Time
The childless widower in his third age sits beneath the frame of the toy store window looking away into the street while three Teddy Bears, one in a just-right high chair, mourn never being held in small arms.Long after the twilight has passed, under the darkness of the elevated train platform, he will stare, lost…
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Getting Married in the Shadow of Iztaccihuatl
She dreamed that shooting stars would stream the palaba roofson the night of her honeymoon,that Iztaccihuatl would spark embers approving of her love,glistening her wedding dress in ashes and a dozen golden sols. The next day she would drape the vestido on the line, it’s wetness letting the entire Pueblo know thatthere was spotting, consummation,…
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Fallen Fruit
It starts with the apple falling to the earth,dropped after the bite.From the rotting hole on its flesh, the worm wriggles forth to the light.The stem dies.The leaf turns grayand floats away.The worm penetrates deep into the ground,fertilizing the crypt.The Death Moth emerging flies to a veined sky fresh with purple pulp. This earth will…
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Side Effects
In my dreams I ride bicycles. In life, I once knew how to ride them.Now I am old and side effects have my feet missing the pedals and falling down.
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Smelling and Seeing the Brightness of the World
I smell the freshness of uncut spruce un-trampled snowin the whiteness all around me.The hard freeze has piled high the world. I dare not crush it less it reekof cat piss and gasoline. Have I gotten too close or too far?The world is too fragile to be h e l d.Soaked in the river its…
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Trying to Stay Even
In the mild June heatjust outside my windowa mom with strollerraces by menever to be caught.My slow tingling feet envyher swift muscle flow.I imagine her heart beat rapid yet smooth like a robin in flight,mouth full with new twig,no sore wings from miles flown—happy with joyand accomplishment.Yet, my heavy breathfalls heavy and slow,lingering,dropping my soul…
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Sixty Degrees and Clear
Sixty degrees and clear.She dies -morning hospice shiftwhile I’m getting ready to visit her.Waxen in her white bed,arms bruised and quiet now,mouth wide in a gaspas if in scream, as if sayingah, no! Both eyes closed,turned down for my visit,denied all further light,sky or even ceiling.I touch her hand. It iscold. It’s only beentwo hours.…
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Our Last Suppers
They pass the plate between themmother to daughter, father to son,a communion stretching to foreveruntil the plates are fulland father and son retire to the living room to watch the game.The mother advises on the adornment’s of the daughter, the father pats the son for his stratagems of the future.They have always been this way…
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The Promise— More and Less
After, the awe returns with less shock. A father lives in a quiet unannounced moment. At his celebration of life service all the children wear black leather. They refuse to die, be strangers, vow to know their names, remember their world. The sound of traffic on the way back home leads them to a smelly…
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Everything Known Will Be Unknown
Soon, all I know will die, be buried or burnt in the bonfire, lost to senses and thought, become un- known. I will fall to my knees and become a turtle carrying my home on my back. If I cry out, who will hear me? Who will know me, when everything known is gone?
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Bury the Children of War in Their Good Things
Bury them with their Motanka,doll tight in their hands.Dress them in that yellowfleece wanted and put back on the shelf,two wreaths of roses and gerberasadjacent their crypt,filled with their birth smells,the sandalwood, jasmine of the crib,a towel and a bowl of waternear to wipe their tears.Flood the nave lightly dark so they may chase the…
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Ubasute: Carrying Life to Death’s Mountain
I listen to his wheezeand watch the machine ascendfor a full breathe thenfall back down againand know I must trek to the mountain once again.Like my mother, heedless of self and for my sake, will he snap twig after twig to point my safe return?She died clutching a small cross,a loblolly branch,her bones resting on…
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Mothers Can’t Live in Your Future
I treat the future as past,a bright yellow house I inhabited,filled with broken furnitureneeding repair, replacement, to bequickly put to the match or just all thrown out.There is a kitchen with pots and panseverywhere and much flour dusting everything— and bread, bread, bread, so so so much bread. Maybe I will keep that aqua sofa…
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Knowing the Spaces of the World
I wonder aboutthe life of spacesI have passed through.What songs have they heard that I have not? When did the stench of death pass through?The honey scent of life?The particles of the pastlinger in the air eternallykeen to the nose of houndswho can discern every atom of this invisible world thatI can only know via…
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The Dick and Jane Primer of Parental Grief
I open memory to gut it. My dad empties out to a red sea. I can’t swim. He never taught me. The tide flows to the shore and I am saved. I now see my father floating submerged face down. He bloats purple. I think he’s dead. The waves beat furiously against his body. I…
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You Can Never Return and Never Know
Even those who can never go back dream of returning back home, taking the long long way back on a rusty Indian motorbike belching white pass the whitewashed high school, the wounded buildings housing black lung renters choking in the cigarette smog of late winter, pass the signs of the empty supermarket the shredded leaves…
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Making Miracles
She’d get up early and secured the world for Milagro:Making sure the window latched and wouldn’t lose a dream,that the new bread would rise and be ready for tomorrow’s stove, that the kitchen would always smell of promise and hope, the two of them forever making good meals,making familia, in the rise of heaven,that the…
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Buying Shoes in Five Easy Steps
IHe slipped on a pair of silver heels for my mom to try on, and though she was past the time for balls andpageants— she married him anyway. IIWhen I was three years past my first stepsmy mom bought me my first pair of kid’s shoes:brown and white lace-up buster browns that tookfour rabbit ears…
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Everything that Matters
Is this howling coming from my soul’s basement from me?. Or them?The ones who betrayed life, death, me?I’ve done everything expected of a son. Outlived them. They taught me everything—but I’m not even sure I know the truth. I have more questions than answer.Why have I spent a lifetime runningaway from them only to build…
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American Sonnet for Spanish Aunts
Aunts sewed their lives bare.Their needle, thread made rich dressesthey dare not wear,ironed straight all the creases of great rich white silky minds.The Gringos wore their handiwork without praise. Aunts dreamed their small dreams inSpanglish, Castilian, Rioplatense,the unknown languages of hope.They prayed and chanted as they cut, sewed and ironed.To watch them slave away is…
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Choices Too
I see sky from my window.Beyond the fence there are treesand a road that fronts them.Further, I know that there are mountains but I see only hatchlings tweeting from the topmost branches.A car flies by anda birdling falls below the fence.I make a gilded cage from spare bricks and steel.I place the little one insideatop…
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Our Dead Fathers
Fathers seldom die in their own bed.They slip in the tub, choke on a machinein bloodless ways you never imaginedor hoped or feared.Neither a blessing nor curse,just a life cut short or one lived too long. The blood they no longer need is drained to a pail. Arms that held babies and worked all their…
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Cold Snap
A mother out in a cold snapstumbled on an odd little notehalf buried in the snow near her boot.It seemed a bloody torn clothbut opened to a small half wing.She almost, in shock, let it slip her grasp.Yet, it rang a tender bell,for it felt like her baby’s pink palm,even though, the cat was sitting…