My son was surprised by the real villain,
relished the sidekicks, and knew all
about Gal Gadot.
My daughter enjoyed the training montage, pondered
whether Wonder Woman would see her mother again,
and wished the hero hadn’t died.
The more things change, the more
they remain
the same.
Poem, Sunday Evening
I came to the office to stay
only long enough to write a poem.
I am the only person
in the room.
I have written words for flowers in bloom;
& about my father, the person
in the few lines of the poem
I will write on this Sunday
evening. My father taught me
how to work on a car
in case I did not make it
in college. That way,
I’d be able to stay
employed, & it
would be far, far
better than writing poetry.
I’m sure he would say it
if he were alive, but he for
sure is alive,
in my words.
Song birds
sing, because they are alive,
not out of hunger & sing for
sunrise, the way it
comes up over Grider Mountain.
She sewed a lace doily
to the back of her jeans
jacket because her momma told her
she couldn’t afford to buy
the one she saw in the store
window. It was shaped like a spider
web, and for thirty years she has looked
for a patch shaped like a spider
for the center of the web.
Experience pleasure
in the aesthetic
of thinking,
as in solving
trigonometric identities
or differential equations.
Revel in logic.
Savor Sudoku,
from folding paper,
picking the pencil,
positioning eraser at hand.
Accept the challenge
of the exercise,
its elegance of reasoning,
beauty of symbols.
Admire the result,
all squares realized.
when your heart breaks
do not try to hold it together
with scotch tape
and call it strength
with white glue
and call it impenetrable
do not hang it from a string
and say to yourself
hang in there
let it fall
let it shatter
the pieces will scatter
some lost forever
….
when time has worked her magic
and you have felt the jagged edge
of every bit that is left,
new pieces emerge to fill the gaps
and they all bond together again
in a way you never thought possible
impossible if you tried to hold your heart together
as it was before
so when your heart breaks
let it
We Are Left…
Perhaps we should have seen it coming:
This loss of reason, this loss
Of love.
It had so recently seemed—oh! so hopeful—
But now
The table is stripped
Down to the rough wood;
Dark night has fallen quickly,
The chance we thought we had is gone;
And we are alone, bewildered—
So close—it had all seemed so close—
We did not know
It would be this hard.
in its quiet cage of sky
folding golden light
into its mouth
with a spoon of stars
she seems docile thoughtful
and sleek to her pointed ends—
celebrated horns
of plenty of goddess and god
of ocean pull of tide push of shore
of fecundity and impulse
glow and shadow.
In the same vein I feed
brain in its cage of skull
folding words
into its synapses
with a spoon of memory
and brain is lit and churning
and thirsty down to pointed spine—
celebrated path
of sacrum of bone and ridge
of chakra fierce rattle ragged strength
of grace and angle
color of moon.
In Bethlehem is a yard sale’s old
mower with a cracked head and
a wheel-less baby carriage with
Ken and Barbie in naked repose.
Across the way an empty salon
welcomes walk-ins with squirts
from a concrete hippo in a blue
fountain and front lawn whimsy
of a half-moon outhouse.
Oh, a whiff of
hog-shed where sows give birth!
Three men in Sunday shirts smoke
on the steps of church with mud on
their boots and rain in their eyes.
In tatters, the stars-n-stripes wave
at the self-service post office.
Here’s a field of broken balers
and Bertha’s Corner Store where
the gas pump’s had a stroke.
Up the road
is a sign for Elementary Summer
School: Drumming & Dancing
