****
words fly from my pen
land as sprinkles on cupcakes
a poem glistens
The neighborhood tabby and her annual litter
scamper out of sight like ghosts in pilfered slippers.
Bees are sheathed like fingers in the foxgloves.
Young ferns unfurl their curved stems like tongues.
Two houses down a fat man and the mother he hates
have barricaded their front door with crates.
No one comes or goes for days at a time.
Roses in the yard blaze and climb.
At the foot of a pear tree, mama cat skulks,
stalking a carefree squirrel who dares her to pounce.
She calls his bluff with a thud, then flounces home
with jaws full of supper, trailing drops of blood.
Out on the water in early morning
The sun like a Queen who can’t
Find the right crown as the clouds
Provide cover so just a little
Light comes soaring over the water
The waves lifting their white hands
To welcome it as if astonished
It cares enough to return
you came to remind me how sweet
the world was with you in it
your hands are front and center, their spasticity magnified
like I am meeting you all over again
wondering at the awkward way you handle a fork
before I knew that you damn well
could use those hands in all ways important,
before I came to love them exactly as they were
because they were you, before I knew
that you lived with pain but pushed on
that your brother never walked or talked,
but you were sure he loved
I’ll return to my home town and
look in the windows of the house
I lived in to see
if I’m still around.
I’ll go to the ice cream shop
and ask for a double cone
not for the incense and crystals
selling there now.
I’ll look for my mom’s car
in the mall parking lot.
Have you seen it?
It’s a blue Buick Electra
with a crumpled right headlight.
Maybe I’ll go back to Mrs. Deere’s class
and win another spelling bee.
I’ll go fight that scoundrel Michael again
for taking my baseball cards.
I’ll find that kid
and pop him one – POW!
This town tries to fool me.
It’s hiding what I know
thinking I won’t find it.
Did you see the comic shop
it stuck under a condo tower?
It took the old couple
I raked leaves for and
put them side by side
underground.
The best playground is now
in the median
of the new bypass road.
It kept Stop n Shop and the Burger Barn
but they pretend I’m a dumb tourist.
It brought in all these strange people
who don’t know I was here first.
But I can’t be fooled,
I know what this town really is.
I remember.
You coil around me,
In my best story,
I am desirable.
A woman worth
a continent of longing.
Someone they
don’t leave willingly.
They leave anyway.
In my best story,
I desire.
The right person
just in time.
And even though
I lose them,
I love them first.
So strange seeing intimacies
from the back seat
like being dropped unseen
into someone’s bedroom.
Neck massages for the driver,
driver’s hand reaching
over to the passenger seat doing
whatever unseen tenderness,
maybe just a hand on a knee.
A moment of gentle affection,
shining in its simplicity
its perfection.
