untitled
raven
or crow
caws overhead stark
black on brilliant blue slow
wide-winged shadow
trail before me our
cloistered lives
forever
woven
in a compact mirror,
sold out in your size,
you wear yourself, out;
swivel to praise your victor,
the knees of your trousers,
thin as haricot verts.
each dress
remarkable-
good under hideous
men.
shed the first
lesson
of six
something
is forced-
yellowbound
will
pass.
new century
needle-
old queen
of man.
Come grab your chair
I’m over here
These days we write
won’t disappear
We sit to watch the stories grow
I’ve traveled your stories
You rest in my poems
We share the shade
of leaning, home
We sit to watch the stories grow
When you’re the leaves
and I’m the stem,
we root together
and wait for Spring
We sit to watch the stories grow
And next year’s harvest
starts with this year’s seeds
We gather our words
on this fragile belief
(Note: This is a Golden Shovel format borrowing a line — the repeating refrain – from an online collaborative poem I am working on with some teaching colleagues)
My night body floats
into a moonscape. I am
no longer human. I am atom,
a speck of lunar
sand. Yet I remember the silk
of river, scent of yellow
elder. I remember when
I was hard-shelled & pensive
like a slow-footed
terrapin. I remember the insistence
of muscle & how I lugged
my troubles around; they were weighty
as the biggest hams
from Prague or a backpack
stuffed with slabs
of granite. Now reduced
to moon grit, I am an imperceptible
hum. To be tremoring
fleck, to be unshackled
from the burdened gravity
of earth brings
euphoria & I settle
into the featherweight
until I began to roll
back to the blue
planet, picking up mass
& weight. Water
rushes over me along
with deep sea mammals, kelp
& coral. I backstroke
into my own flesh
as I toss off the twisted
sweat-soaked sheets.
The rushing water,
The pounding rain,
The rumbling clouds,
The cracking skys,
It’s all a peaceful noise,
One that I sleep soundly to
We found it at a shop
shoved in a corner
behind an art deco bureau
and a faux Tiffany lamp
An ornate mahogany frame
covered in a film of dust
the beveled silver surface
foxing from the ravage of time
A timeless beauty enriched
by flaws that hinted
of faces and situations
it reflected through the years
The shop owner frowned
his face pallid and dour
as he roughed the scruff
beneath his chin
You don’t want that one
It’s ruint an’ ugly
besides, it’s noisy
an weighs more an ma wife
He begrudgingly sold it
but with a stern warning
of no exchanges
and no returns
We brought it home
excited to see it hang
on the blank wall
next to the stone fireplace
Later that night
we were awakened
by the sound of music
Como’s Papa Loves Mambo
We jumped from the bed
and ran to the source
astonished to see
a party in full swing
Rocks glasses clinking
cigarette smoke wafting
as more guests arrived
laughing and yelling
Waving cheerful greetings
as they stepped through
the beveled silver surface
foxing from the ravage of time
They partied til dawn
then left whence they came
but returned nightly
to continue the soiree
One guest in particular
looked eerily familiar
as he roughed the scruff
beneath his chin
He smiled broadly
and reminded us
of no exchanges
and no returns
april fool
there is a tulip
named lovely in the patches
of snow underfoot.
suburban
we lean on the mailbox, sending and receiving messages from earth.
finance
across the valley
the grey river filled with ice
makes bank deposits.
Granddad, with a passion for things that never changed
like spelling and arithmetic, would occasionally step back
to recount the achievements during his lifetime —
electric lights, the flying machine, the auto, computers
This was before high altitude slacklining –
two brothers walking 2800 feet
on a one-inch balance beam of nylon webbing
over the gulleys of Yosemite
Before we carried weapons that killed, in a flash, dozens
of our own countrymen, women and children
Before a man swallowed by a humpback emerged with his first thought
being that Matt Damon play him in the film version
Before we knew that our highly evolved brains would stumble
toward Earth’s destruction, maybe Mars too if we don’t run out of time
