Posts for June 2, 2026 (page 15)

taking lessons this week.
I have always felt at home in the water,
swimming came easy
like the smiles and hugs
between me and my father
who taught me to swim
but little about being a dad.
My relationship with him
gnarled, tangled as the wrist-thick roots
of the big oak tree
behind the basketball goal
with the home-made backboard and pole
(grandpa was frugal, you know).
Where dad and I played one-on-one
in the long summer afternoons
when I didn’t feel like a kid missing a parent,
instead—my father’s son.
He missed most of my swim meets;
I was so damn proud of my breaststroke,
tiny blue ribbons and medals
now tucked away, forgotten
in some box—magic gone—
returned to scraps of fabric and metal.
I watch my kids learn to swim.
When they look for me, I’m here,
breaking cycles, beaming:
I don’t tread the same water
as my forefathers.

This green comes but once a year
Newness incarnate green
It sneaks upon the bleak landscape
Bringing life to winter barren branches
Light to the shadows of age old trunks
Backlit by morning sun glow
Reminding the world that all can be reborn

groggy 
    like the fog reached     
        beyond the river 
         into my mind

sleepy 
    like the world is resting 
        on my eyelids
        pushing them down

spacey
    like the room is zoomed out 
        & out of focus
        no matter how much i blink

disoriented 
    like the floor is slanted
        walking sideways up the walls 
        trying to watch my footing 

about my Jewish great-grandma.

It’s probably what you usually

don’t discuss over dinner during 

folk music conferences at Kutsher’s, 

but he does not seem to mind.

It’s definitely matrilineal.

My dad carried a little brown

Old Testament during WWII

issued to him by the Navy.

The Bible for Jewish Soldiers and Sailors.

He taught me to recite the 24th Psalm

by heart when I was in the 1st Grade.

Why the 24th? People ask me.

I repeat his answer:

Because everybody knows the 23rd.

Listening quietly to reasons, I need to pay attention.  

-for Fanny H. Salmon

The world busy
with writers today.
I see the evidence 
online with our
humble corner of 
poets, living lives
and writing about
the same. The wish
of it, placing
hope and longing
to words. The world
turns and writers
flip their lights off,
go to bed, while others
wake and go about
their business, so that
there is at least someone
writing all hours, and
it comes again to
my turn. Let me
not disappoint.

She realized her soul
needed reforestation
her arms hung limp
like wilting lupine
in the twist of summer heat.

She did not know the process,
how to weave ecological change
where to scavenge for seedlings
that would fit safely and snuggly
like the blooming echinacea along the border.  

She searched for flora
linked to the stars in the night sky
juiced with nutrients to support
her journey to engage in an alchemy
of shedding old shag bark in the current of the river.  

First the twinge of loss, uneasy balance
an old, galvanized bucket rusted with memories
about to spill over drenching the earth
pulling forth new growth
teasing each parcel to spin its web in the darkness.  

Casting a net to catch the burdens she shed
along the bank of Dry Fork Creek
corralled away from her consciousness
making room for new trails across
slick rocks cradled in distant promise.  

If she tilted her head back
let the rainwater cascade down her hair
would the bloom of jasmine vines take root
like the deity Anthousa and flow off her shoulders
dripping sweetness  

Oil burst bright from the rind-wound,
sudden annunciation.

Warm mammalian sweetness,
bodies nursing sorrow mouth first.

Even the blossom knows this:
stamen gold with fatal dust,
petals already collapsing toward
the earth that asked for them.

If God wants anything
it must be our brief animal heat,
the unbearable fragrance
we release when we break.

I have loved people
for the light already leaving them.

wringing out the rag,
wiping the counter:
a lesson

unwrung, it leaves standing water on the counter
too little wet, it does not clean well

the rag absorbs the water–
wants to hold it–but
too much and the rag
becomes a laden sop

balance is the point
between too much and
too little

changing with each interaction 

my life will have meaning
if I can serve as a rag–
to wipe clean the leavings,
to leave the surface unpocked

to hold only the water I need,
to be wrung free of excess,
to carry away the scraps
so a new feast may be 
prepared