Christmas stockings hung 
on the mantle, that by magic
appeared at the foot of our beds
the next morning. I remember
soup suppers and early 
Christmas Eve services and 
finally being old enough 
for midnight mass. I remember
Christmas at Chase Lake, 
Adirondack snow and ice
cocooning us as chickadees
ate peanut butter and seed
ornaments off the outdoor
trees. I remember three, four
generations squeezed into 
my sister’s house, the loaves
and fishes miracle we pulled off
to feed everyone. I remember
the silence and freezing cold
of my first pandemic Christmas,
spent alone. 

When I close my eyes
You are all I see.
Crinkle nose, eyes that smile before your mouth gets the message.
Your touch and your breath are all I feel.
Healing my heart with tender words and caresses.
I am your open book of well read, dogeared pages
Every turn a new ending and beginning.

We’re asleep. Coma, coma, take
     the key to Roma,
because in Roma there’s a strip,
on the strip, a chalet
in the chalet, a bedroom
in the bedroom, a bed
on the bed, a woman—
a woman of want:
who takes the key,
who leaves the bed,
who leaves the room,
springs the chalet,
takes up her sword,
runs down the night,
to kill the man who passes by—
comes to his strip,
back to his home,
up to his rooms,
enters his sheets
who hides the key
who hides the blade,
remaining in complaint
     Roma without passerbys—
without death, and without night.
without a key, and without a woman. 

Author: Rafael Alberti
Translator: Manny Grimaldi

sittin’ on a tailgate
listenin’ to the dogs
run a rabbit out in
some big open field
forty miles away it
seemed from just
about anything else

beagles are a way 
of life for us; they
have always been
my great grandpa
my pappy, my dad
and then me too

floppy eared and
big eyed; baying
through brush as
they jump another 
one up and take off

we raise em up as
family; they belong
to us and us to them
from stoic pups all
the way to the end
I have never known
what it is like without
the love of a good old
beagle hound 

lord, what would it
be like without them?
I don’t reckon that I
ever want to know 

The disappointment I saw, over a salty ocean was a star that’d always fall.

Phi-lo-so-phy al-ways comes too late, I sta-ted ten mi-nutes in-to the date.

“The more you plan, the more that can go wrong – I just like to keep moving along.”

You keep calling me home,

the heart is a muscle

i’ve been not quite fainting. i get dizzy and drop to the floor. might be broken heart syndrome. something i already know. my shattered heart still cuts me, with shards of memories, confetti scraps of your baby pictures like razors slicing me.  

jude told me, “the heart is a muscle, and yours is working hard.” oh son, my heart’s job was to hold you, but you left. you broke my heart.

my heart is a muscle with chambers where i keep my sacred things: your heart, your mind, your kids, your life, even the way you sang. 

the left ventricle falters. my blood a movie monster blob. it oozes through my body, sinking me to the ground. my poor heart laboring, yet hardly working at all. 

If…

if we must follow
 a different desire
we must be rid
of body

separated from
perceived beauty
To experience 
sincere freedom

then authentic peace
may be allowed
to fill in the crevasses
of deficits

We fight this peace
Perhaps because 
it’s then we 
lose our excuses 

to not be rid of self

Squint and ignore traffic’s steady line–
this picture-postcard–a neighborhood 
bisected into little rows. What lies
beyond the fenceline brush is the crumbling
where-we-live, where the apartments fall
down around our necks, the factories 
and shuttered old commercial buildings
looming over our apartment blocks 
and rented homes.

Maybe I’ll always live
on this border, in this expensive place
of almost just enough, selling words 
for less each year, adjusted
for the cost of inflation. I rise
to greet each morning with the view
of the brick wall outside my windows,
two blocks down from the detached
homes, greening in their sectioned yards. 

I’ve gifted you handmade cards for Father’s Day
every year since I can remember.  I know with copy paper
and colored pencils I cannot repay
you for early morning zoo expeditions,
illicit Twix bars and Three Musketeers, overstuffed peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches, endless Mario Kart
matches, hours-long driving lessons, or advice
you gave me when I gave you nothing but headaches.

Handmade cards cannot compare with what you’ve given
me, but thank you for loving them anyway.