I couldn’t make it. I was seven.
Stolen skateboard underfoot, I attempted
The ascent of “monster” hill at Duell and Meadow.
Tractionless, my size 3s were no match
for concrete clawing backward at the wheels,
and I splintered
into a telephone pole, forever after
taking the long way to Granny’s,
an extra half mile, McDonald to Main.

I think of this at the peak
of “Oh My God” mountain in Guyana.
Half a day’s climb straight up
on ice-mossed rocks in rainy season,
no switchbacks or
taking the long way.

The vibrations of Kaiteur Falls
crashing at the bottom
shakes loose the memories

of the steepest slopes I’ve summited,
of the smallest ones
that have summited me.

I never caught a fox.

This lifetime I don’t know how and
I probably haven’t sat near one while
knowing it and

if I am ever lucky like that, to see one
close enough to know the fox
trusts me, I will

know it

is you, like how I know it is an
ancestor visiting when
they appear
as rabbits.

On the Porch With Mother Earth

Look upon these skies                                                                                    
                    see the blue                                                                                    
                    watch the clouds                                                
bellow with the wind…                                    
Feel the earth                                    
beneath your feet                                                                                    
                     solid and true…                                    
walk with these trees                                    
feel them breath in                                                
                      what you breath out.                                      

Man is but a flicker                                    
in the cycle of life                                                
                         yet                                                
                         we have dominion                                    
over it all…                                    
Our power can preserve                                                
                         or destroy                                    
with whim or folly.                                                                          

                          Listen to the birds                                                                                    
                          and squirrels                                                 
                          rolic in the rain                                    
or hide beneath the leaf                                    
of a great old oak.                                      

Thunder rolls                                    
and lightening                                    
pierces the horizon                                                 
                       with jagged bolts
                       of unharnessed glory.  

                       What a wonder this place            
                        we call home.                

Tony Sexton        

I wanted to write you a poem
to remind you how much we
adore you 
and appreciate you
and simply couldn’t be without you,
so just imagine 
three lines,
17 syllables,
each one 
just dripping with love

Like kids gathered in the sunshine,
we just follow instructions.
Nothing serious here, benign and good natured,
we kid and joke.  We’re not going
to Wimbledon, but home to lunch.
Never much on the line,
we’re like kids at camp.
And what a relief that is.

We hear the tap-tap-tap first,
then see the slow shuffle of my best friend’s
uncle, blind from birth.

Leather straps on his shoulders sprout
a tray of candy bars, $.25 each.
Some of the kids on the playground shout
Hey, Candy Man!
My best friend and I run up to him,
call him Ray.  He smiles at that, hands us
a Milky Way to share.

Past the school yard, I watch him pause
at a lilac bush; seem to sniff its lush perfume.

Over the years, I have often wondered
if fragrance sculpted shapes, conjured colors
behind his sightless eyes; and if he paged
through those scent-painted images
as he trudged along the hard landscape
of his daily sidewalk circuit?

I can still see Ray, slumped in a chair, soaking
his feet in Epsom Salts; his parents,
my best friend’s grandparents, shushing
his complaints.  Go play, children! barked
at us.  Too late.

God blows a steady breath of light
on sleeping faces with a divine hair dryer
doing up the doo we’re due  

Tomorrow we shine with memory
life’s scent emanates from our wrist
no one notices our cardboard eyes  

Surrounded by books.
No time to read. I miss them.
Must rethink my life.

How big of a relapse

does it take?

How big of a slip

of your foot off the break

before they ring up

your next of kin?

Can you imagine what it takes

to understand news

that is told in a language

you can’t comprehend?

A strange man

fills their ears with

so much jargon.

All they catch of his phrase is, “…your father.”

Leave them digging through

the newly deceased’s

yard sale medical textbook

to translate a coroner’s

loose tongued terminology.

No cranial nerve impulses.

No pupillary response.

No oculocephalic reflex.

No spontaneous respirations.

You’d hold that book

like a Bible.

You’d search those pages

for a miracle

or a prayer.

You’d know they’ve told you something important

but you can’t quite

make the words out.

They said something.

They said it too fast.

Please…

slow down,

slow down,

slow down.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine”.
My heart aches with the remembrance of sweet voices from the backseat
singing proudly and full of love for the verse, for his mama. 
My son
My beautiful boy
I longed for the idyllic pregnancy and birth experience and childhood and laughter and milestones. 
And here we are tonight. 
So full of fire and sweetness – like a marshmallow self destructing in embers. 
His mind is SET.
His adolescent muscles are taut.
Hollow eyes now only hold scorn and contempt at not getting what he wants. 
He is smoldering and I have to walk away.
I recognize that temper.
It is mine.