I heard a bonny elf-call
calling o’er the lea:
“come and nurse an elf child
underneath the sea.”

I followed down.
I never found
the child,
the king,
or me.

They say therapy heals more than you think
They say talking your thoughts out can solve most problems
They say learning to leave problems in the past can lead to enlightenment

I say sitting with your problems can bring them to light
I say talking through my thoughts with writing heals wounds
I say learning to except your problems
Not leave them behind
Is the cure

Thank You Lex Pomo, over this past month I have explored myself more than I have in years. Thank you for being so excepting. My first thought when I think about something now, is how can I write it in a poem. Seriously thank you all. Can’t wait til next year.

My father played possum one morning,

his crew cut bristles on the pillow

next to momma’s bobby pin curls.

In this story, I am four, no new

little sister yet. He doesn’t twitch

or blink or move a bit. He’s asleep

Mom said. I look closer, but no sound.

I yank on the bedspread, the sheet,

his white tee shirt, just a little.

Nothing. I tickle his eyelashes,

his ears, but he really is a possum.

I move down to his feet, test a toe

then a knee. It was a Saturday,

their day off from the GE factory, but

he was not going to get away with it.

I march into the kitchen, push a chair

over to the stove where I grab the spatula

stomp back and give one good whack

across his nose. Words I never heard

before spill out. It’s my fault baby doll.

I’m awake now. Let’s make breakfast.

Remind yourself
How far you’ve come this year
Reminders of how much you’ve lost to grief and fear
How many seconds, minutes and hours
That landed you 
Here
You are now at Point Nemo
For the laymen that means it’s just you
And you can’t swim to shore if you want to
So this poem is me
Staring down the next 30 days or so
Of sobriety
My final attempt to stop the buck
And with that I bid you all 
Good night and
Good luck

When I think I’m done
my mother tells me,
you have at least seven years.
Seven years of blinking
& having spent another five dollars
on another brass cow pin. Two years
of the dream where you hand me
30 brook trout & I slice open all
of them. On my final cut I look at you
& find that’s not what you’d wanted at all.
Seven camping trips jumping cliffs
into brittle water & biting knuckles
to stop myself calling about nothing
except a sunrise I saw over the lake:
pink flaking in the water & fog
& cows lying down in a far-off field.
Mostly just muscle memory. Some
furious & immature. A one-month stint
reading Neruda’s Song of Despair drunk
at dive bar open mics sort of hoping
it goes viral. Thirty inconclusive
doctors’ visits. Every waking from
a headache, thinking it’s over.
Then the dream about the 30 brook
trout. Ten months combing through
memories under some excuse
wondering at which one I’ll finally
feel that internal tugging let go.
Maybe this: reading late
at Boston Central Library.
I felt something cold on my wrist.
You’d pushed up my sleeve
to check my watch, & said
the time in another language.

When it’s not just the close of a chapter, but the close of a book—
one that had you hooked—
it’s sometimes hard to put down.

Series are the hardest.

After investing in each new work,
falling in relationship with the characters, and spending hours upon hours in your nook…
It was entertaining, climactic, serendipitous, dramatic…
Then, the last page appears.
What do you do now?

To move on,
or to keep turning back the pages of time?

An author’s style can be predictable,
yet comfortable.
It hooks you.
Then comes alignment…

Until you want something fresh.

Holding on to the book can add unnecessary weight.
The next release may not be worth the wait.

Everything has a shelf life.
Whether for a season or for life.
Whether pausing and coming back later in life.

As hard as it is,
Nothing’s wrong with being open to what’s next.
Live with no regrets.

I choose to close this chapter, this book, and this series.

Fin.

He took me with him to the woods.
I sat cold in his dump truck, 
reading my small town library books, 
listening for the Pileated Woodpeckers.
I compared them to the thuds
of my Daddy’s axe. Chop. Chop. Chop.
Blue Jays called through the 
dead of woods. Gray Squirrels
ran around, up, and down
the trees, Daddy said were too green to cut.
They gathered their acorns and seeds.
All of us preparing for the dead of winter. 

Daddy loaded up his dump truck
like the Gray Squirrel held seeds in its cheeks.
Together, we delivered to the elderly,
the sick, and the cold. They all thanked him,
offered what they could. More often than not, 
pocket change and a sorry smile.
Before we left, Daddy started their fires,
said, “Don’t worry ’bout it,” and took me home
with his own pockets empty. 

Mostly, you cannot understand agony
until there is a new rabbit, stiff breath
slowing, lying across your lap on the
wet shoes towel. You look at the dog’s nose
against your knee,the rabbit, the empty
back yard spots, and then you sob because
you are an expert at making grilled cheese
sandwiches, but you cannot anchor
this brilliant, thumping life

When your thoughts are naked, do you feel
exposed? A rugged mule, mud stuck and angry,
do you bite the strap of your wisdom’s mercy or
cling to the breasts of your folly’s supper?

Fairness is love.
We all go walking…
On roads, through the woods,
to empty houses and open hallways,
in our minds. You do not want to
wipe spit from your eyes any more than I
wish to see you embarrass yourself by
choking on the crumbs of your arrogance. 
Please. Everything sags on everyone, eventually…
and cats always eat sardines, canned or fresh.
You will not give me a $20 without a favor in return. 
Why should I share my air with an
unnecessary pollutant? Seriously. 

A poem is…
A poem is a proclamation…
A poem is a proclamation meant for…
unusual celebrations on a cloudy day.

So many poets, both modern and ancient,

remember to invoke the muses 

as they dance into the ballroom of poetry,

and almost none of them remember

to release you back into the world

after everyone celebrates the work.

English has so many words

for announcing our farewells,

yet few of them capture the need,

the opposite of an invocation,

where we thank the world for all the brainstorms

crashing against the shores of our concentration

while we look towards the borders of our creative reaches

and pray you will visit us again.

Whether our muses are spirits eternal

or starlit events that drip down on us from above,

they deserve our acknowledgement and attribution

so that their beads of wax might collect and form

other candles elsewhere.

Please accept my benediction

for this past month of making

that you need not have bestowed

on your most unworthy of supplicants.

Know that I will spend the rest of my sanity

looking for you in my daily life

to spare you from listening

for the harried calls of artists

too inane to tell you goodbye.

Health wise
I’m back where I started from
at the beginning of the month,
my poetic output waylaid
by a vicious virus.

Today is my first day out
and naturally I go to Felicitous
Bookstore & Cafe where the waitress
is truly felicitous to this old man.
It’s a magical time of no customers
and she sits close to me to read
from her current book: Thoreau’s Walden

I’m all in, her voice
is soft with an almost imperceptible lisp
with which she holds the words
for just a little more:
Our whole life is startlinly moral.
There is never an instant’s truce
between virtue and vice.

She fills me with a deep sense of loss.
I miss all my old lovers, men and women.
I miss my days in the Navy with Dr. Tom.
I miss my life at the houseboat
on Harrington Lake.
I miss my great grandaughter Penelope
and her brand new baby I have not seen.

But here I am with this young woman
and it is enough.