Posts for 2025 (page 15)

Where do we go in the darkness
How do we find the light
When there’s no one coming
Will there be anyone to fight  

Where do we go in the darkness
How do we find the light
When they lock us up for speaking
Who will assert their right  

Where do we go in the darkness
How do we find the light
When they round us up for existing
Will anyone make it right  

Where do we go in the darkness
How do we find the light
When they string us up for loving
Who will use their might

Your shadow is a silhouette within
when sighing of cruel silence comes to call
my mind to dance a distance that depends. 

From corners of my longing, you ascend
& brush my face & float into my all—
a shadow that’s the silhouette within. 

The quirk of lip, the quest of hand, that wends
past wearied days & weathered, stony walls:
My mind a’dance a distance that depends. 

Your phantom fingers trace what they intend
til you & I, in one expressive sprawl,
are shadows kissing silhouettes within. 

I taste you still—a past that yet portends
a future of this waiting that forestalls
you mine: A dance & distance that depends. 

Can we become true union & transcend
one man, one woman, flesh that’s born to fall,
when shadows past are silhouettes within
two minds that dance in distance?  It depends.

A wall of 35 mm home movies in their brown canisters
record a life unexpected.   My father would shake his head in disbelief.  

How did a poor schlub like me grow up to have so much, get to travel the world?
His parents, Russian Jewish immigrants, arrived young, never sure  

of their real names or the year they were born.  There’s a photo
of an ancestor, long black beard, pushing a plow through his field.  No one  

recalls who he is.  As Dad grew up, he rode a horse-drawn wagon
after school, delivering food from the family grocery to those well-off.  

A large pickle barrel is forefront in the store photo, Dad’s aproned father
shadowed in the back.  More photos.  Here is my father graduating several years ahead  

of his age, his slim frame waiting to fill out.  There are stories, too. 
Of the seven years it took to woo my mother.  He had called her on a dare.   

His joy at fatherhood.  His medical practice in the family basement,
ballooning from a handful of patients to more than he could count.   

If there were disappointments, he never said.  Accepting, grateful
men don’t ask for much.  A secular humanist, Dad surprised us toward the end,  

his sculptures turned spiritual – flames, hands in prayer, a figure in lotus position,
eyes closed.      Seems there was one more thing he reached for after all. 

You will grow comfortable in hostile silence
I will squirm at the sight of you 

You will never question your annoyance 
I will claw at my skin trying to understand

I lost the chance to love you a long time ago

yet somehow 
I was the last to find out 

The whole body aches when recounting
missed clues or clouded signals

Amazingly you made this all my fault
and amazingly I believe you 

You had all my faith in the palm of your hand 
              This is what you did with it?

The red and orange leaves fall on the road as I drive

Shakily committing to the path in front of me

I’m not hungry anymore

Angry at slow drivers

The wind hits my face as nausea simmers in my stomach

I bounce my bad leg

Music floats through the warm autumn air

Sunlight lingers on it

And here I sit, knocked off balance

Because of

Red and orange hair

Shining in a flash – like a coin that is no longer mine

Burned into my irises and my senses

And suddenly, I’m not right

Because of you

things happened to me, as a newborn,
though I do not remember

as an infant,
desperate to understand and communicate

as a child, learning through experience,
to recognize my own stories

as an adult, dealing with the aftermath,
seeking The Path

all these things, written down,
in the Great Book of Life

not just for me,
but for you, too–

anthologies of
human experience,
points in spacetime

(After “For the Poets” by Mizz Whozza Whazzit on bluesky)

Christmas break, a Friday night filled,

overflowing, with snow and unkindness.

I took a bus downtown, bought a book,

your favorite author, then the train

to you, to your parents’ home, to safety.

We sat on the couch, hugging,

joking, kissing, talking into the night,

until your mother gently called down

that it was time for your friend to go.

In all the years, we only ever kissed.

(after an undated and untitled photograph in the portfolio, “Encounters, Discoveries, and Confrontations,” by Brian Lav)