Light filters in around the curtain, shining directly in my eyes
The neighbor’s same hound still woofs at the squirrels
A new snuggly dog’s nails dig into my back
Light, sound, annoyance
And fortheloveofGodit’s5AM!!!
But where have all the birds gone?
Don’t live life as a spectator.
-Felix Baumgartner
Earth spins on its axis once a day
at nearly 1,000 miles per hour.
One day this week I was playing pinball
another day was Singo at the bar
and today I checked out the Farmer’s Market.
In every place I went, there were people,
couples, families,
but there wasn’t a person.
Earth orbits the Sun every year
at roughly 67,000 miles per hour.
Friends I haven’t seen since last year
when they visited after moving away the year before
texted last night to say they were thinking of me.
One of them is engaged now
and I truly am super happy for them
while I sit underneath the pine tree
outside the same studio apartment
I’ve lived in for a decade.
Earth and the Sun
along with the whole Solar System
themselves revolve around the Milky Way
at about 514,000 miles per hour.
A full orbit takes almost 250 million years.
I can be fully entertained watching a game of sports
because I don’t need to play.
That’s someone else’s dream.
Someone else can jump out of a plane,
someone else can ski the double black diamond
or act in plays or movies
or open their own business.
Maybe you feel the same way.
But there are
dreams
futures we envision for ourselves
lackings
desires unfulfilled
hope blown further along
like leaves in unceasing wind
even as we proclaim to enjoy the weather.
Is there any faith that our own ways can be found?
When all the math of motions is done
our Earth hurtles through space
at a blistering
1.3 million miles per hour.
There’s something I think I lost
several million miles back
but I’m afraid if I try to reach for it,
I’ll fall right off the planet.
At a stoplight, she turned to me, on her right
You’ve got ice cream on your face
A Marlboro Red dangling precariously
In the corner of her now-pursed lips
She wiped it off quickly, somewhat roughly
Took a drag and we proceeded through
Then sang “Highway To Hell” together
My father tended fruit trees in his retirement
Joining a long tradition of farmers growing something sweet and necessary
Winter pruning carefully selected branches to boost the summer crop
Planting long rows of bare root stock as a promise to the future
Certified to spray poison for pest control
Shooting woodchucks threatening the stability of the orchard
Managing transient work crews despite language differences
Surely his work among the trees should have meant
he was among the first to know that our tree of life was dying
And had been for some time
Dried withered leaves on the ground out of season
The once flourishing liberty tree naked and forlorn
Our feet crushing husks as we study the branches to find
No blossom and no fruit and no harvest but bitterness.
Where draglines once clawed at the mountain’s side,
And dozers shoved ridges away with pride,
The wind now wanders through young poplar trees,
And goldenrod bends in the autumn breeze.
The haul roads crack beneath the frost and rain,
No truck has thundered there for years again.
The tipple’s bones lie rusting in the weeds,
While black-eyed Susans bloom among the seeds.
A creek, once buried underneath the spoil,
Has found its voice beneath the rocky soil.
It sings through hollows no machine can tame,
As if the mountain never knew its name.
The deer return at dusk to softly feed,
Wild turkey scratch where coal was once the need.
A fox slips silent through the sumac red,
And nests of songbirds crown the benches spread.
The miners’ labor lingers in the stone,
Their sweat and sacrifice forever known.
Yet nature, patient as the turning years,
Has healed the wounds and weathered all the tears.
For mountains hold a stubborn kind of grace;
They bend, but time restores their weathered face.
Though men may carve and carry wealth away,
The forest waits to claim another day.
And standing there beneath the evening sky,
You’d scarcely know the mountain had to die.
For life has draped her shoulders green once more—
The mountain remembers,
but the wild forgives.
“We are the bruise that love left behind; we are
not the pain itself—but the mark that remains”
— from my poem
from your prompt
June 2026
You’ve been here before—
or somewhere so like here
the similarity is striking
the unfamiliar to clarity.
“Keep being the amazing man
you are, strong in faith & love.”
One of many notes, left
behind and within your Bible,
when you’d left it there
with her. The surprise,
mid-service, weeks later,
when you all went searching
for God’s word, that week,
but found hers secreted
between pages.
“This verse reminds me of you—
strong and courageous and a light
in my life.”
There is darkness within
and all about, but inside
uplights are charging
for the wedding you’ll entertain
tonight. Their indicators are
still red, no green to signal
time to go, and you wonder
how they’ll be ready in time.
How can they be ready
in time?
“Remember you are His masterpiece,
made for great things.
Never forget…”
but right now, you don’t feel
great, don’t feel a masterpiece,
can’t see how things have come
to be what they seem to have come
to be, can’t see the way back…
“Love not only finds a way, it creates
a path if there isn’t one there…”
but you do see breadcrumbs. These
breadcrumbs. A list poem written
on your heart: The one
crimson earring you wrote
into poetry days ago. The scar
on your ankle of mystery
origin, baptized in the water
of caves under Jamaica, cauterized
reminder of hard lessons learned
there. Here is the sweatshirt
beside your pillow, breathing
cinnamon of her scent. The dreams,
the words, the visions, of so many
besides you and her. The songs
she wrote, sang, recorded, sent.
The ring you entrusted to her sister,
trying to give it away, take it
from your sight, until it was right,
until it was okay to admit
you already knew.
“God’s promises are like the anchor
in the storm—unshakable and true.”
This is a storm. You remember
last year’s storm, this same time
of year, Lexington Poetry Month
like a time capsule, every year,
reminding of another time,
another place, another patio
where you wrote words of hope
and a future that didn’t come
yet—and the storm that followed
and the storm that gathers,
mounts up like thunderheads
in the arid moment of now.
And you’ve been here, before–
or somewhere so like here
the similarity is striking
the unfamiliar into clarity.
“Before we meet again, share one
thing you have learned about
God’s love, and how it has impacted
you. Bonus points
if it’s about us.”
But this time is different;
you have been here before,
but those were the ends
of stories. And you knew
it was the end of the story.
This time is different;
you’ve never been here
before: This cannot be
the end of the story. Will not
be the end of this story.
To answer her, then, back then,
when she knew, when
she believed. Him
and you.
His love doesn’t go.
Yours hasn’t, doesn’t
go. He waits and will
wait.
And so will I.
Because it was always
about
us.
I love the geometry of parallel parking.
The commitment to angles meeting angles.
Deciding to swing the wheel
toward what looks impossible.
Most people
keep driving
instead of risk
looking a fool.
I see the space next to you–
it’s tight–
but I can make it work.
I see possibilities
where you need to circle the block.
What a shame.
When I slide perfectly
between two cars
on a crowded Brooklyn street,
I feel a private joy.
Strangers applaud.
You roll your eyes.
i drive to where
both of you lived
a sleepy little town
gutted by high school
graduates who promised
themselves that they were
getting out
even now
i can’t help but look for
my father’s truck
black and gray Silverado
with rough, rusted ladder racks
deep-tinted windows
smelling of cigarette smoke
work sweat
i can almost taste the breakfast
of a single Flintstone vitamin
chocolate milk and a beef jerky
my five kids
fevered with independence
in this sun-dominated Saturday
friends, jobs, anywhere
but with Dad
it hurts deep and good
to know that their worlds
are now bigger than me
they won’t be like us
adrift
not knowing if the man
that raised them
loved them
or found them lacking
and that’s the best I can do
with what little you gave me
You’re not like a dog on a leash
constantly checking
your phone. A message from
that special one? You’re a little
more open, available
to yourself and others. You’re
free to make other plans on a whim
without considering
how it will affect the beloved. And aren’t
you just a little freer to be your true self?
Air a little deeper
in the lungs, tension in the shoulders
released a hair, no tightness in the belly
no held breath.
You’ve been given a Get out of Jail Card
There was a time we did celebrate
Before they set out to eradicate
us
Take a look
at me and you
Are we not seen as people too
we are lovable
we are incredible
They dismiss us as invisible
