Posts for 2025 (page 120)

the river,       her friend
                                       time,                          the
door that led        to                  space.                     The
book
                                                      of            windows
                                                 had to close
                                        in           what had gone wrong

      in
the world.

Some
folks                              argued that

                                                                                         peo-
ple weren’t
                                                                                    at fault,
               constantly

                                                                          shattering the
                               golden

                                                                             quiet,

    quivering          the ground.              

~ An erasure of Elizabeth Strout’s novel Tell Me Everything pgs. 7-8. The poem’s title is taken  from p. 1

It has been awhile since I dreamed of you
My very first love at the age of fifteen
When they said we couldn’t possibly know
true love, they were wrong

Friends at first and lovers next
bumbling through many first

slb

not yet where I want this to be but it really has been wanting to get out. In loving memory of a soul gone soon Timothy Michael Davey, your kindness and words live on in my heart and memory. 

is a strawberry mantra
sun rouged and juicy  

a patch of plump            
exuberance  

tasty psalm                       
of blushing delight  

our eyes dizzy                 
with wonder  

the night dripping                       
sweet from our tongues

And now, finally, let me be one with the earth
Let me be a vessel for it, be its front
Its physical embodyment
So that, through all it sails , it can in me
In one small way enter into humanity

When it’s quiet in deep winter
Something subtle, whispering is heard
Mechanics are performing maintenance
In the deep workshops
Half spiritual, half elemental beings are busy

And inside each one of us
There is slumber during the deep freeze
Wisdom weaves itself
Repairing, youthesizing us, the earth, the universe
Wisdom breathing light into life

Stumbling around my house,  
wondering if it was ever even mine. 
While building my home I made one terrible decision.

Now, I live in a haunted house of my own errors. 
I invited in a demon with no mercy or soul. 
She took everything I loved and destroyed it in front of my eyes. 

Leaving me,
with the memory of her laughter echoing off the hard surfaces in the rooms. 

The day she arrived,  
I observed as pieces of me got torn off the walls. 
My pictures, my carefully selected pieces of furniture,  
and the clock my grandma hung over the fireplace before she died. 
She took everything when she moved out. 

The devil left nothing behind, 
as she roared through my life like a fucking tornado. 
Leaving me with nothing….  
except my naive dream of never seeing her again. 

The sweet smell of sawdust took her on a ride to her childhood,
like looking out the window while riding the northbound train.

Her father, a woodworker gave her a bag of sawdust and wood shavings
to play with, simple objects to amuse her for hours.

She pulled out the odd shaped shavings and lined them up,
train cars to carry her dreams to unknow destinations.

She learned to identify wood sources from the scents and colors,
cedar, oak, pine, hickory, birch and the coveted mahogany.

Shavings and dust mixed up, culinary delights to place on doll 
plates as delectable desserts from his workshop.

Perfumed wood, a gallery of scents and hues, as if in blown glass
bohemian decanters lined up on her windowsill.

I’m thinking you grew up like me,
taught to keep your knees together,
be sweet, obedient, let your grandparents kiss
and hug you even though you didn’t like it.
Did your mother teach you, like mine, to kick
those boys between the legs if they get fresh?
Did you figure on your own how to insert a tampax,
or was it your girlfriends who gave directions
through the bathroom door?  Did you learn
to French kiss and where to put your hands
by practicing in the camp bunk, or was it a boy?
Maybe you remember the winter chill of your thighs
as you walked to school in pleated skirt and knee sox.
If you are still with me, ask why no one told us
about the sneaky transformations of old age.
That parts will thin and shrink and fall. 
That your body will learn to sweat, bring to mind
every smelly man you ever knew.  And not only
whiskers on your chin that you now recall
your grandma plucking at her dressing table,
but eyebrows which will suddenly sprout
the wild and wiry hairs of your Uncle Joe.     

“The Longest Day of the Year,”
I remember you’d say it,
like clockwork, as if for the
first time. Then sometimes we’d sit,
   soaking up the extension
   of orange and pink glowing skies.
Now, practice barefoot grounding,
amidst the summer solstice
moon, absorbing surroundings
lit by twinkling stars and the
    glow of summer and new starts
    confirmed by grass-covered feet.

Sunday, I stopped at Burger King

Uncle Sam don’t pay enough to employ experts
don’t pay me enough to supervise industrial alcohol plants
or outwit crafty moonshiners and smugglers whose pockets bulge
to count out barrel rings to be sure every barrel got burned
hunker against a cold brick wall with my feet in snow
waiting for hours just to maybe see Patrolman Percy
or his boys hefting Canadian hooch
fifty bucks a week ain’t enough for this boy to walk into a gun fight  

the pleasures of good food and drink, a bit of jazz, are denied me
but my buddies and me know to hold back some when we raid
So when Isaac Murphy approached me said he’d pay me
a hundred a week if I’d look the other way
say I found no bottles in flour sacks on the box cars
that left his farm on Vaugh’s Creek
ignore the stash he had in his customized Cadillac –  

Damn straight I was in
and never got caught.