a poem doesn't have to be special a poem just has to be what it is
March 7, 2022
Category: Poetry
false spring wrings out tshirts amplifies birdsong deepens brick into clay folds clouds into steamy gem studded panes salt stained boot laces winter coat pulled from its hook with a sigh
February 26, 2022
hidden heart a pitch pine ugly asymmetrical offering no sustenance no shade unappealing unyielding brittle bark drifting down dusting crocus pink dandelion a weepy volunteer of waste places unsuitable subject for painters and poets no buoyant flourish no flashy shimmer no rustling whisper stark and still austere shadow making no promise holding no confidence asking for nothing granting only its stature its deep roots its enfolding of earth and sky and a moment to remember or to be forgotten
February 19, 2022
storm tossed mast electrical pole sheets of snow hiss shoreline crashing creak of spruce towering clouds doom purple close of day as wind scours the streets clean like the sea I'm going home
February 19, 2022
Life's beautiful compromise is knowing I'd do it all over again to be here with you.
February 19, 2022
Green growing-things stand fast asleep beneath the churning sky. A breath of storm arrived that morn', a gusty, cloudy sigh. Fitfully, uncertainly, the snow begins to fall, its crystal down a formal gown on sapling straight and tall. Raw the norther's voice becomes in squalls and bitter frost. Above the gale of icy hail the sky itself is lost. Long into the black of night the blizzard's will is bent, 'tween limbs and leaves the wroth wind weaves a tale of harsh torment. Sharp upon the distant hill arrives the edge of dawn. Storm's icy reign begins to wane as snowdrifts gape and yawn. Silent flee the ragged clouds and so begins the day so short and cold it soon grows old and fades to solemn gray. Beneath the sky the growing-things now sleep in blankets white. Their tranquil dreams still filled with beams of springtime's wholesome light.
December 30, 1999
when i count my blessings i count your friendship foremost among them.
February 12, 2022
There's more love in the artless sincerity of a grilled cheese than in all the world's fully loaded words of earnest sentiment.
December 14, 2021
It's November first. Leaves blow around on the trees, still green, cut up among gray and white clouds and patches of blue sky. I have no topic with which to begin save my fixation on future pain, potential loss. Abandonment, failure. It's difficult to stay in the moment. I still recognize joy. It envelops me in much the same way grief pours out of me, all overwhelming. But I vacillate between the saturated emotions of love and the rictus of anxiety that lives in my muscles, fueled by obsessive, intrusive thoughts. Is everyone like this? I can't let go. Is it my age? My sex? My long history of broken connections? I'm building a home, a household, a family. Is that healthy? Or is the question moot? I belong nowhere else. I have no other refuge. I'm building a refuge. For him, for me. With no experience, no models. I pull endless ends together, never knowing where the middle is, knowing only that I want to overcome all obstacles, master all daunting tasks. For him, for me. I still look down Washington Avenue on my way home from work, at the side- walk in front of the university, where he said yes. The happiest moment of my life, when the whole world opened up. Bloomed. And we did it. Together. We made a household. Together. We negotiated a respectful roommate relationship. Only gradually did it become a tenderer thing. A mother and son. My love for him is boundless. It encompasses worlds. Every moment of pain and grief and fear, every step inside the vast terrain of emptiness that has defined my life for forty- seven long years, was worth it, to be here, with him. Even if I fail. Even if I'm abandoned. Because I'm blessed with his trust, his faith. How can I do less than my best, to shelter, to provide. Let at least that much go to him, to that beautiful man, that beautiful child. How could I have known the day I met him how he would migrate through my soul to take up residence in my old, ugly, burnt up heart? To dissolve so much of what I thought I knew and leave resilience in its wake? To become home. Kin. Family. I want him in my life more than I've ever wanted anything in that life. It's November first. It's a new lease. It's a second year in our home. It's a third year of loving Eli.
December 13, 2021
when you say a woman is a goddess, remember that Eris was a goddess too. it's Thanksgiving and I'm thinking of my mother, a woman so powerful she traveled back in time to the origin of the human race and, Pandora like, granted us a gift we never wanted: a fear of abandonment so strong we give up before we try. but unlike Pandora, naive and innocent, my mother did it out of spite. she was born a black hole. not a normal black hole, or even a super massive black hole, but the black hole at the center of the universe. she was the Big Bang. she was the originator who became the destroyer. she consumes light, hope, little girls. whole worlds collapse. she is the solar sundew, the eater of flesh, bone, ash. her leavings, lifeless space bodies, aimless carcasses who no longer remember where they came from, who can no longer imagine where they're going. trails of dead stars, fused relics of base metals. she's not like our ancestors, the ancestors of mortals, she's the ancestress of the neutron star that shines only in death, bastard smear of radiation fixed by the eclipsing eye of a camera lost in space. unrelenting. purposeless. the cat that drops the mouse, still warm, she keeps her hands in carved out rib- cages, tent poled to hold up her fitted hide, a wicked pneuma exhaled over a blasted landscape of calcaneus bones never lifted above untrodden paths, leathery alveoli never filled by the only inheritance we were ever offered. why, she might have asked, need they light when they have no eyes? and she ate away the sun. why, she might have asked, need they walk when there is no path? and she ate away their feet. why, she might have asked, need they speak, breathe, crash through, rupture, evolve, awaken, when no elementary particle escapes the spiraling drain, the suffocating death, the translucent fading into a single dimension, into an outline, into an unlimned representation of what never was, a remnant of what never existed? and she gave birth to me.
November 26, 2021
