January
Chased by a bleak January wind,
The ragged ends of yesterday’s storm
Scattered refugees dressed in purple and gray,
Huddling at the edge of the extravagantly blue sky.
Amber sunlight fingers caress the day
An uncertain effort to massage out the cold.
At the end of the cul de sac, the blacktop collapses
Crumbling shards sinking into the mud.
A driveway assembled from ruts,
Worn into the forgiving earth,
Crowded by a forest of naked shrubs
Shimmering with water droplets -
A galaxy of stars trapped after night’s retreat
Recklessly waiting for the sun to fall asleep
The return of Night’s shadowy embrace
Freeing them to climb back into the sky.
Fall's End
Its fur waterlogged and rumpled,
The squirrel is a fragment of the ever-present rain clouds
Darting across the ground, gathering provisions,
A frantic prayer for the dying fall.
While we slept, a snarling cold clenched its fist
Conjuring snow from the falling rain,
A dress rehearsal for Winter’s unforgiving tenure
Morning revealed the brown landscape shrouded,
A soundless, claustrophobic beauty.
She lingered as the morning stretched out,
Basking in the no school laughter of children,
Grinning at the sliding, white-knuckled drivers
Till the clouds cracked open to release the sky.
A moment as still as the space between breaths
Reflected flawlessly in the water of the cove,
A gray world suspended in a malachite embrace.
Before After Now
Before
My love was a godless prophet,
Drunk on sorrow,
Obsessed with loneliness,
Rummaging in the ashes
Of a misremembered forest fire
Hungry for something sacred.
After
The smoldering remains of
An overheated summer day.
We are ghosts rising up into the half-light,
Familiar strangers crashing into each other.
Your grip is a memory growing solid
Against my starving skin.
The ocean glowing purple below us
Seems to have no end.
We leap
Unconcerned about what comes next.
Now
Sunlight unfurls through the kitchen window
Weaving around the buttery haze,
Pancakes sizzling on the griddle.
Marvin Gaye plays on my phone
Loud enough to be heard,
Quiet enough to not wake the kids.
I am humming off-key
Dancing badly across the worn linoleum
You watch, a steaming coffee cup
Wrapped in your hands.
Your laughter a blessing,
This place a sanctuary.
Magic
All morning the conversation tumbles
Soaked in anxiety.
“It’s gonna be a humdinger”
Is the old man’s muffled greeting,
The drift towards concern in his voice
Betrayed by the hope for magic
Stirring behind his eyes.
I surge through the day’s work.
When my headlights splash onto the garage doors,
The clock still reads early afternoon,
But night’s high tide is flooding the low lying daylight.
Ahead of me, tail wagging, snuffling,
The dog bounces across the field
Onto the leaf obscured path.
The woods are storm day grocery store,
Bread aisle empty.
Undressed, unashamed the trees,
Open to embrace the swollen, dark water sky.
We plunge into the silence,
Honey thick and equally as sweet.
The pressure, deep sea heavy, gathers around us.
Sighing wearily a breeze surfaces,
The first flakes falling
With all the purpose of a butterfly
Caressing the still frozen ground.
The wind finds its footing
Crashing through the branches
Waves breaking on a rocky beach,
Washing away our streaming breath.
We stand transfixed.
The Arsonist
In the false daylight of the full moon,
The arsonist doesn’t need to make an effort
At hiding his hungry intentions.
His love for fire is an unconscious urge,
A promise of salvation in the popping crackling flames,
A place of belonging in the smoke haze.
For so long we’ve stubbornly clung
To a persistent delusion that our house was unlike the others.
We scoffed at the heretics, pointing out what it really was;
A pile of dead leaves and dried wood soaked in gasoline
In a barren field in the middle of a lightning storm.
In years gone by, when the fire found us,
It never consumed us completely.
We swept up the ashes,
Patched over the scars,
Insisted on downplaying the danger
Ignoring the fractures it exposed.
When the arsonist sought out our neighbors,
We swooped in as heroes,
Patted ourselves on the back, expecting exaltation
Smugly suggesting that if they follow our lead
It would never happen again.
We stopped training firefighters,
Nobody bothered to check the hoses.
Naked in the dancing orange light,
We finally saw it for what it was.
What will we be in the aftermath?
Already the liars are picking up their rakes
Conjuring new piles to call home,
Proclaiming the arsonist a savior.
Bleak majesty
Coffee flavored and shaving cream scented,
The sun starved day struggles into being
Cautiously edging through the living room windows.
A furtive breeze is tugging at the unraked lawns,
Sweeping the bones of leaves to skitter along the street
Dressed in its patched, sky-colored asphalt.
In the crook of a railing, the remnants of a spider web
Slow dances to song only half heard.
Coffee flavored and shaving cream scented
The sun starved day struggles into being
Death of a mother
November 12th 2019
Another ordinary first day in a season of firsts
Sun flashes through the cracked sidewalk sky
Till the clouds consume it all
Shaking out a rain that soon turns to snow.
Greetings from winter, brooding just over the horizon.
When last year’s freeze finally surrendered,
It’s eulogy written in muddy yards
Summer’s promise whispering in the wind,
Cancer came and claimed you.
The widow and the son gathered to grieve,
Pretending that it was me who rejected them.
One more insult to my existence,
Hurled at me as you crossed into the void.
I think it’s been seventeen years since last we spoke,
Angry shouted goodbyes will have to be the sum of it.
I find your reflection in my kid’s faces
A shadow unwilling to be seen.
The scab is torn off, opening the wound wide.
Annihilation is a false hope,
A rumbling stomach in a quiet graveyard.
I clench my fists around my rage
Searing it shut again.
I am smoke seeking substance
Before the wind comes.
Meditation on Tyranny
The river is a wild mystery twisting through his backyard.
He stands on the shore lobbing rocks into the middle,
Mesmerized by the ripples and the vanishing magic depths.
He travels across the waves in his boat,
Wondering at the creatures he drags into the light
Wriggling across the scuff marks left by his father’s shoes.
Unable to resist, filled with bravado, he wades in
The magnificent cold of the water wraps around him,
It is everything he always dreamed that it would be.
In his ears, the sound of his name chanted over and over.
His words a flock of blackbirds bursting into the sky
Forgotten fragments of the night manifesting
Scattered glass shards glinting in the afternoon sun.
Their promise of pain a tale from another time
Obscuring the delusion of this moment’s uniqueness.
Start Again...
From the time I discovered that I wanted to be a writer, I gravitated towards poetry. I’ve written articles, tried my hand at short stories and attempted longer stories, but most of my success was my poems. Three years ago I thought about making this a place to share my political screeds. Then I started a new job and didn’t add anything. One of the beauties of the new job is that it affords me the time and mental space to engage my love for poetry. At the urging of some friends, I have decided to start adding them here. Here's my first.
Fall
A day that can only be found in mid-autumn
Last night’s frost no more than ghost lines
Haunting the edges of fallen leaves
Ice crowds the car’s windows
Fading quickly in the amber sunlight
Stumbling through the nearly naked trees
The last of summer’s green only a brown murmur
Its furious gold orange red moment now spent
A hand shaped oak leaf jumps into the breeze
Wandering wearily across the cloudless blue sky
That stretches out to erase the fickle moonlight
Chasing away the tired stars