The More Serious Poems
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Vigil [Finalist, 2013 Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition]
Standing naked on the cool bathroom tile,
Our eyes caress each other in the light
Made dim (in acquiescence to the night),
And through its warm shadows, I see your smile.
Your smile—still burning bright in late night gloom
As we wash our bodies and catch our breath—
A fire of life in the shadow of death
Who now holds vigil in your mother’s room.
Where your smile finds its fire’s a mystery.
And I’ll not seek the secret of your flame,
But when night lays on me its final claim,
I’ll find your smile and light eternity.
The End
From skeins of pain she wove her mother’s wings:
From sadness spun comfort; she wound relief
From raveled wits; made fabric of her grief.
From suffering, she fashioned needful things
For four long months—and then one night, she knew:
She lay beside her on her mother’s bed;
Said, “Fly away, Mommy,” and stroked her head.
Her mother heard, and flew.
My Mother-in-Law’s Death at Easter
My father-in-law rises—wasted, gaunt—
From an empty bed (emptier when he’s there),
And hauls his body to the breakfast chair;
Eats; says to himself: “It’s what she would want.”
Wet with tears, my nine year old improvises:
From the yard—flowers for her empty bed.
He calmly, gently lays them at its head,
Hugs me and, full with memory, arises.
This Easter miracle is unexpected:
Our world is new for she shall rise no more;
And yet she reaches from beyond death’s door,
And through her love, our lives are resurrected.
Lullaby
The water's treacherous, my love,
And wild and rough and free.
And winds and storms shall toss your bark,
Yet you must put to sea.
To fly is hazardous, my love,
The air is cold as bone.
And though your wings are still unformed,
Yet you must fly alone.
The earth is full of pain, my love,
And loss comes to us all.
And from each height that we ascend
Must come a fall.
Monsters are in the world, my love,
On land and sea and air.
But in the darkness, reach for love.
My love. It’s there.
Transitions
I was never skilled at transitions
When life is lived on the edge.
Like birth, marriage, and death
Who is ever prepared?
When life is lived on the edge,
Each breath seems momentous.
Who is ever prepared?
Change will leave its scars.
Each breath seems momentous,
Yet life goes on as before;
But change will leave its scars
And we will never be what once we were.
Yet life goes on as before—
Like birth, marriage, and death.
And we will never be what once we were.
I was never skilled at transitions.
Neighborhood Gods
My childhood was populated by parents—
Stan, Gary, Ron, Dick, Marge, and Erwin—
Neighborhood Gods who
Held Earth in their hands;
And their breath
Shaped it with a word.
Grass grew beneath their feet.
Thunder, rain, and sunlight fell from their looks,
And we grew in their soil, all us kids entwined, and vining together toward their light.
I’m older now,
And know how grass grows,
Why rain falls,
That parents die.
But I would barter with the King of Dreams
(Had I a fair trade)
To craft a glass ball containing that ever green world.
Then I would carry it in my cloak
In a secret pocket, safe and protected,
So that when Gods fall,
The Earth would not tremble.
For Violet, at her Birth
Sweet Violet,
Your face, still folded
Round and close in private night,
Wisely, waits not upon dawn, or sun,
Or Nature's prompt to blossom,
But upon some ancient, epic poem
Whispered to yourself,
The final word, the final leaf to hear.
Pretty flower,
Born knowing
In your perfect smallness
The universe,
Your delicate tendrils
Blindly seek our touch,
Wind around our impatience
Until, holding us calm
And trusting our eyes are wide enough,
You stretch
And offer us the world.
A Spring Fall
On a day in April,
As cherry trees rioted in early morning streets
Drunk on their own nectar,
Earth, awakened, yawned at last
And scratched its weary bark.
But my friend lay down with Winter.
I hope that in his bed,
Sheets of hoar frost
Cradle his folded blossom;
That leaves of a favorite western novel
Loose their binding
And fall in a harvest of margin notes
Seeding the sky.
Sunrise Meditation
Having come home late and wakened early,
From his watery bed, the Sun arises,
Turns back white foaming sheets to the box spring shore,
Regards his flushed complexion in the Atlantic.
Lordly pelicans hang on his gentle breath,
Attending the Royal toilette:
Arms wide, they cloak him in morning,
Exchange the purple midnight shrift
For gilded sky-blue pantaloons,
Effortless, economical.
Witnessing the exchange—
Their synchronous aerial ministrations—
His High ness slows his ascent,
Halts ocean’s crash with a wave,
Feels his regal persona crack
Like an egg
Revealing golden coasts within
And tranquil white waters.
Clouds
Night clouds over the Atlantic
Sculpt in solemn procession,
A weasel,
A camel,
A whale;
Then wind transmutes their sails into a
Photo album
Turning my life's pages across the sky:
A clipper ship is made
My mother at tennis,
All those summers ago playing Mrs. Cowley. Her serve and
Smoke from my grandfather's train engine
Chuff and chuff
Billowed phrases of Mozart
Horn concertos my brother practiced endlessly in high school;
Then moonlight modulates his stanza
Into that freckle-faced sixth grade fucker
Whose only satisfaction was
My humiliated, bloodied eighth grade nose.
And I'd swear that
One is our honeymoon on this same beach
Twenty years ago
When I never quite relaxed because your love,
A floating moonlit nimbus,
Dominated my sky
In shapes I could not yet comprehend.
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