Category Archives: Poetry

The bodies of our dead

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You will say to me
Why are you grieving?
And I will show you the limp form
In my hands

You will ask
What is it?
And I will say
A dead salamander

You will say
They cannot live for long
And I will say
But it had a name–
I cannot say it

And you will ask
What is the big deal?
And I will tell you
Hope.

But what I will not say is that the prone and lifeless
Body of a man
Too easily resembles
This ephemeral creature

The day I spent for him
The last day I spent for him
Looking for a hat
Big enough to cover his fatal
Head injury
Fatal head injury
Never far from mind
The bodies of our dead.

Forever

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If I could give you
The safe place
Perfect butterfly,
Wings the color of sunlight
wave through the glass

If I could give you
The shape of the boy’s face
The cities he sees across the dammed
River

If I could give you the boats
Alone on the water
And the sheer drop
Carved from stone

If I could give you these things
In a bottle called forever

You would understand
How I failed him
today
How I failed her
yesterday
How I fear tomorrow

Arms not strong enough
Forever

Family Picture

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Suddenly I see us
Traipsing in,
Blankets, flotsam of ourselves
Trailing behind us
We are like children
Dazed and shellshocked
By the dust of a falling world
Still crashing down
Behind us

But we are Here Now
And as we wipe the tears and soot
From our brand-new-eyes–

We recognize
This strong family
Resemblance in a sea/a star
Filled sky full of Light.

Imagine a box

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Imagine a box
A brightly colored box
Like a present/
Like a gift
Something inside of it
Calling you to life
Christmas morning and all your birthdays
It was the birthdays that got me
The little girl alone in the hospital with army issue socks?
Tragic.
Life is tragic.
But we can all use socks…
You taught me to love
And risk myself
be brave child,
You whispered
Open the box.
Treasure inside.
I promise.

August moon

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Blue night
Bright moon
Luminous face
(smiling he says, like this..)
Unspoken splendor
Scattered across the slope of earth
Like a silvery veil
Pulled across the lawn at an evening
Wedding
Between us
And eternity
There stands only
Time
Like the face of a clock
Luminous but broken
Dragging it’s hands slowly
Across the face of it
Looking for someone in the night
Looking for Someone in the light

Unravel

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Odysseus,

I picture her each night
Her hair, the yarn unravel
All the work of a single day
Woven and unwoven
Like the even exchange
Of breath in and out

Her days are split
Between unwelcome suitors
And reflexively scanning the horizon
For the husband of her youth

Waiting.
Holding the wolves at bay
Unspooling the skein of her work
Making it invisible
To save the idea of a man,

Odysseus.

Folk songs

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We used to sing
someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah

So long ago I did not
Know she was a train
Or that the kitchen was the vaulted place
Where someone might
Fix her

I always see
My grandfather’s kitchen
Coffee brewing
And a momentary sense of safety
In old stories

People he once knew
The threaded string of memory

working on the railroad
All the live-long day
I rise to a quiet kitchen
No signs of Dinah
Or any other train come crashing through
Still
I worry about Dinah
All alone

Forgiveness

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She is a tough mama
Says things like
listen carefully
And be still

Of course she is swamped with work
Mostly contract–
Cleaning up crime scenes
And the debris left by careless
Men

She does not make the stuff she cleans
Disappear
She simply packs it away
In suitcases which resemble– safes
Attaché cases
Body bags
Zip

Then she turns to the aggrieved
Yes, the aggrieved
with her steely-eyed gaze
Says c’mon
Let’s drag this
To yonder cross.

My friend

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Anger is my intimate
Companion
Eyes me over soup
Shouts instructions
As I mow the lawn
He has the worn face
Of a college professor
The demeanor of a silent
Partner
In what?
You are right to ask

Why is he here?
Oh, I will blink,
As I think how to phrase this…

He helps me to articulate
Why I am so dependent on
His wife, Forgiveness,
For everything