Love Is
Love is kind
Love is true
I’m so happy I met you
Love is the feeling
I have with you
Our love is kind
Our love is true
summer lets the insects in, and the ones who graft to the hot aethered ceiling would select against death by cat jaw if they ever saw another bug
to mate.
if they ever left this place again.
when i lean to the sink, the mirror has my face but for a single
eye
which has been eclipsed by a fly of
unimpressive size.
Old Seventy Creek revisited
I went back to Old Seventy Creek to see
if it still was the poem I found when I
was young and searching.
I began at the point where poetry
would begin–inside the cave where no sky,
or planets or stars could distract from the searching.
Inside that darkness of the Sinks
as it was called by that name from historical
times,
Rhymes
flowed through with sounds,
begging to be organized in lines–
as poets know full well or one thinks
poets should know such truth well
that lines are made for words.
I did not need to leave the darkness
to realize that Old Seventy Creek
was poetry, lines,
stanzas, simile, or metaphor
released in its flow.
suspended midflight / sun-blinded
shadows stretch beyond feet / quick rush
behind faster than feet kick back
rustle of chains / twisting whistle
of metal on metal in need of
a good greasing / musky wood chips
wet from a downpour that morning
tacky rub of rubber heated
in the July Kentucky sun
against young skin / let go of chains
reach forward / grasp to gain more height
more distance / more air / let loose / fly
There sits within me an aching
emptiness a cliche-shaped hole
only you can fill a longing yes
for something I am too scared to
speak aloud to anyone but God
A long day of driving,
roads narrower than
I’m used to, coming
and going from New York
and Pennsylvania.
This long drive has landed
me in Manistee, Michigan.
Before checking in, unpacking,
I go in search of water,
deep cold Great Lakes blue.
As a child I loved Lake Ontario,
Fair Haven beach. The summer
afternoons I spent swimming,
getting sunburned. Now,
a week after Labor Day
The Fifth Avenue Beach
is near empty, except for flocks
of gulls. I take my shoes off,
as someone approaching
holiness, slip-slide my way
through shifting sand to rest
my weary feet in cold Great Lakes
water, to rest my weary eyes
on a horizon where water meets
sky, and nothing else matters.
