Category Archives: Poetry

The Distance Between Us

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Bet everybody loves a good

love story 

Boy meets girl or something…

Only that is not enough

You once asked me if there were monkey bars that went all around the world

Could you do it?

I could do the math

24,901 miles around

Oddly specific last mile the hardest

Arms tired by the miles of 

Arm-swing-leg-swing-hang repeat

131,477,280 bars

Feet

Hands and arms so tired

After an eternal day in the sun

The girl is such an ordinary thing

But the boy is one-of-a-kind

Worth looking for

The man who could, would, did and shall

Make this love story

Luminous.

To the March

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In deep winter

she chooses to suspend 

All the ordinary chores 

Drags a heavy fishing net to the belly

of this man-made stream

Feet first into

cold deep

Swims upstream

where they wait for her

bobbing on the water

snagged by the naked

limbs of winter branches

An old oil can, adorned with red duct tape,

several empty beer bottles,

torn flotational device,

And a veritable tableau of shirts and trousers

Snagged on naked limbs

then animated by the wind

Once carefully extricated

she lines the children up by year, gender, alleged disability

Names them back to life

So they can indeed

Fly, flock of winter birds 

to inauguration.

Katydid

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Sit with me

On the bench in the park

In the imaginary world where

Children are always

safe and well

In the heart of the tribe of small

voices call out 

hide-and-seek–freeze tag–the ground is lava

As If I could still draw you close

Say I am sorry

say I know you tried

Perhaps in every way they tell you to-

Words written and spoken

Smoke signals and semaphore 

Emptied root beer bottles corked with words of loss

Come to a premature

Conclusion.

Fragile Splendor

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I passed you in the parking lot

of the big-box store

as you walked closer

Depth-gauge transforming 

as you came close enough to touch

pale skin, piercing, faded tattoo

blue outline of a bird

etched between shoulder blades

And the adjectives I use in my head change with each step

Young, thin, pretty become

Fragile, luminous

The mortal turned into the eternal,

vessel or spirit 

Poured out light

over us all.

You and me on the old back porch

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 In an already messy old house

I try to find a place to stash my anger

The beat-up old chest?

Grandma’s dresser?

Each place I go I feel your loss

The way a tall boy once held a short girl at arm’s length

As she beat at the air with rage and sorrow

Maybe it is the air that is the problem…

Not enough oxygen?

The matrix of maternal affection somehow dislodged by 

Something?

Something missing.

It is as though the lost girls had become those things-

A trunk, a cup, a worn blanket

Trapped in closets 

…in the minds of monsters

The old childhood nightmare turned on its head-

The child in the closet 

The mother, the monster

Shaking its imaginary head

“Even I could not 

Would not

Do something so unspeakable 

To a human child.”

Real Mom

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i wrote it deliberately 

the way it has been now to me

for over 20 years

and has been to the created

Universe

For as long as He can remember

Or rather just since that unfortunate incident in the Garden

“Biological mother” might have always been our deplorable undoing-

The willful choice

To pick death over Real Mom

Seems somewhat abstruse and vaguely epistemological 

Until I tell you about the feral 

cats of Universal City

one of whom, just a wee thing

had words with me last night

Sure, they were just 

plaintive and insistent 

Mewings in the parking lot

But we both know it was more than that

It was all of them

Hidden in the margins

Rightfully afraid of the humans who trashed the Garden

Looking for Real Mom

And yet so cold, so alone

so afraid to come home.

Lost girl

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it is the details you wish

To unhear, unread, undo

the window into terrible

Opened by her own

biological mother 

Who then had the wherewithal to

Shower

After she had baptized the child

The spun-glass-irretrievable little girl

In pain and blood 

When she should have plaited

Flowers in her hair.

Modern Ghost

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at the edge of the edge of the silver dance 

the stuff of space becomes so attenuated that

a single floating atom

cannot see the ghost mama

(because there is, by definition, nothing there)

Yet she is.

Curled around her lone, fetal darling

So much smaller than a human

blastocyst 

Just a nucleus, protons, the usual electrons 

Would be panicky lonely

Except for the unseen but still 

so present 

Modern ghost.

Sunshine

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having lost the ancient word for fire, underestimate it into neat concentric squares folded, shelved and forgotten next to ugly Christmas sweaters, baby pictures, and odd clay art projects of now-adult progeny

Neglect means nothing to it, coiled, implacable, unfazed by short and mortal attention spans

Let the last leaf fall but…

Do not neglect the sun

Content for now to burn

At a safe distance

Until the day it will unhinge from invisible moorings and float

Balloon-like Beauty towards us

Suddenly, immaculately attentive

To this nakedness before impending fire.


Everyday Christmas

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Crowded city, lonely manger

Tired little mama so close 

to the house of bread

You tell me the story of

tokens we substitute for transubstantiation 

Exchanging trinkets for the

Stuff of life (everlasting)

or looking for the little clues-

“The ones who still hold on”

So very far from home

He knows you

try to pull a fast one

Child with the big words

In his eyes

Calls your bluff

I know you love Christmas!

Light is no ordinary word when spoken 

In the dark

Commanding songs of rescue from the sleep-deprived

Who ponder why

Gold…frankincense…myrrh

gifts for the

Master-builder

Who makes a transom from a cross.