In a realm of two moons and three suns not
afraid to be besieged by everlasting brightness,
where everyone speaks from their heart spires
and devils and scorpions cavort with sprites,
magic coexisted with every day miracles.
People would cross on invisible bridges
as easily as Jesus walking on water,
on their way to their great soul’s quest.

Now as tablets led to handwriting and
then to thousands of computer fonts,
where seeking adventure becomes
short code for finding death and despair,
where sprites now dine on pixie sticks
and fairies no longer spread their dust,
where those who believe in magic are greatly
outnumbered by those who don’t,
where everyone’s top half exists
with their bottom self wandering about
and never finding each other,
where wizardry is replaced with technology-  
the common light bulb and automobile-
is when wonderment gets consigned to the
bottomless pit of foolishness.

Then magic waits in hidden castles,
patient not for those who have it
and don’t see it, but those who need
it the most and know that it reveals
the truth behind the disguises,
waiting for that old broken stead
to reveal that its Pegasus
and that spell they chanted
to lead them back home to
the magic of their parent’s’ embrace.

Good mothers make their children
fold and put away all clothes,
even hers after death.

Bad mothers make sure
they always wear them
for the rest of their lives.

I am a lousy gardener
that only offends
the soil on top and below.
 
No Petunias or Marigolds bloom,
only crab grass struggling with
Tennessee moss, and a small patch
of Kentucky Bluegrass the
survivor of almost fifty years
and two previous owners:
 
a general practitioner who
layered the inner sod of
the old colonial with
trip wires, alarms, sirens
and intercoms still being
discovered
 
and a Methodist preacher
who cultivated a lawn
of thin earth carpet over
the cheap yellow vinyl
and parquet in the basement—
adding two bedrooms and a shower
for any charitable cases
or needy parishioners.
 
My lawn is left to hell,
the house, gifted to heaven
and the loving attention
of my wife who fills
this abode with the aromas
of her favorite foods
cooking in the oven.
 
The inside is built
on good bones and wood—
a sturdy brick foundation
and oak floors with
a comforting squeak,
sanded and polished
to their original shine.
 
My chihuahua takes great
delight in slipping on them
when she plays fetch.
 
Outside nature riots
in unmolested happiness.
 
Twenty oaks and a few evergreens
defend the spaces of my half acre.
The most majestic one
leans like a hunchback
crying over the stump
of its dead brother below.
 
My trees are allowed to be real trees,
uncultivated, untrimmed, undominated
plus one-hundred-year-old sovereigns.
I respect my vegetable elders.
 
During the spring and summer
the lawn is mowed every other week
to keep my neighbors happy.
 
Five Chipmunk dens burrowed in the clay
provide rooting and hunting
opportunities for my chi,
as the two good boys before,
now scampering
around the rainbow bridge.
 
A black and white stray tabby
has taken up residence on my porch—
sunning in the afternoon,
snoozing in the corner column at night.
He scatters at light and first witness,
his existence a blur captured
on the Ring.
 
Just above is the nest
of our perennial swallows,
real snowbirds I have
no fondness to evict.
The Ring also captures
their welcome and farewell.
 
This dear green acre
has lasted longer
than my happiness.
 
It has the patience
to wait beyond
my grief, disease
and eventual death,
beyond the lease
of all its human tenants
to reclaim its proper heritage.
 
I am so small
to such big things.
We are so small
to such big things.
 
This verdant kingdom
will not shrink back,
wither or expurgate.
 
It will insist on being loved
and watch mine and your colors rust,
for it is beyond discrimination,
consciousness and self-reproach.
 
It will mock you and me
as our fingers dig
down hard into the clay
and grow nothing
that hasn’t existed eons before.
 
It will live alongside
mine and our
happiness and misery,
dropping seeds,
rooting, always blossoming
beyond the violent light.

by the third floor
the weight of history
had become too much
that you wanted to
release it to the sky

by the fourth
my sister still hadn’t
enough of rolling
in its ashes
hearing the moans

by the fifth there
was nothing to see
but the blue cinder terror

so we all took the elevator
to the basement to reset
eat lunch among the relics
and walk the street casually
to the next next door Holocaust

He taught them
where to carve
the dead parts
so the rest could live,
to find its flow
and tap its sap.

With every mistake
the mentor took each
student by the hand
on a short walk
to the middle
of the forest

where it slopped
into pools
thick with inky water,
where the mist
often got trapped
between light and dark.

He mixed water and mud
and pressed it into their chest,
took a sharp branch
and gently scratched
his secret words into them,
until it became a tattoo.

He then gave each a bag of seeds
and a canteen of pool water,
guided them back to their errant tree,
chanted for them to mix both
into the thirsty soil until
it no longer screamed for inspiration.

The students repeated this every day,
watching the grass bloom infinite variations,
discovering their tongues speak
at first his and then their secret words
until they knew all of them,
even those yet to be spoken.

It’s hard to find an even house:

foundations settle at creation,
doors will sag from slamming,

tiles will chip from drop pots,
careless feet scuffing along,  
days when they sweat and cry,

bricks will crack, driveways too—
settling into a haunting beauty,

everything tilts differently,
microscopically altered
from your last place.

Yet, you wonder
if the windows
will stick in winter,
stay open in summer .

You wonder where will
the dust angels hide,
what room can you
see the stars clearly.

The screened in porch,
you notice, let’s
in too much sun.
  
You feel its heat
on your arm
during the tour.

Will it hold your gravity,
if it can’t hold its own?

The air conditioning
shrieks like a ghost.

You hear squirrels
dancing in the attic,
the ones that will
keep your dog
barking all night.

You look for the line
where the water stopped.

The angst settles in you
like night fog, like a lifetime
of settling that ***** you in,

The heavy rain comes
in amounts that
can’t be bailed fast enough.

The house is a lake.
The lake is inside you,
and in the collapse
of the roof, you see the sky.

The house starts floating away
and you disappear inside it.

I am not your dying son, I thought,
as my wife gave me the diagnosis,
remembering my mom in her dying chair.

I will not pass into final memories
watching the Pope in America.
“Bless me, Papa”,
will not be my last words.

I do not believe in my mother’s God
though He did write the best proverbs.
I do not sleep with a Bible on my pillow.
I wake up feeling my heartbeat and breath.

“I am going to die,” she said to me,
days before she passed, on our stroll
to the mailbox, school traffic humming,
finches at the feeder, magnolias blooming

removing her from the usual guard spot
at the window for sightings of the mail truck,
hoping for the delivery of the slightest news.

“You know, I’ve been talking to Jesus
because I don’t want to go to hell.”
“We’ve been through hell already,
haven’t we,” I said.

I imagined a weeping Mary
telling Jesus on the cross
“You never told me
anything of this.”

“Your poem made my day,”
were her last words on our walk,
the last she spoke to me.

A memory of the evenings
of my childhood,
washed over me:

The slice of night
filtering through
as I crept from my bed
to watch her praying the rosary.

Those last days she made a lullaby
with a hint of elegy in the song.
The box of her mind walked there.

The words were nonsense,
just reflections of the melody,
part of all the shining on the road.

She died,
like her mother before,
like her son will,
like we all, like life.

I regret not telling  
her of my dreams,
my nightmares,
my future

while sipping tea at midnight
with her at the kitchen table.
I can only wash, wipe
and pick up the crumbs.

Fallen leaves cannot open time
or add a few short years
to days never meant to be.

In my repose and cancer days,
grey smoke floats the sky
burnt paper and ashes
that drift my mother away.