In your face
I see my marks of age.
In your words
I read my silent rage.
In your voice
I hear my longing.
In your following
I find my belonging.
In your tension
I feel my hidden lust;
your fears echo my own
lack of trust.
Your story of betrayal
conjures up my cross and nail.
Mirror, mirror,
how can it be
that you reflect so much of me?

Spring and summer, they come and go.
Then it’s the hell that waits for me below.
An arm? A leg? Which part is scheduled for torture?
Fair Demeter, where are you? Are you truly my mother?
The pomegranate seeds were bitter pills.
Supposedly something that would cure my ills.
But there’s a side effect for every cure,
and I know now I cannot endure
the months-long torture of a winter in hell.
And my future fate no seer can tell.

I enjoy these brief respites.
I live now for my pleasant visits
to sunny days and strawberries;
away from my torment, the dogs and ferries.

The scrimshaw of the air, the long whales-tooth of sunlight
Etched with seafarer’s care and his great wantonness for the sea,
A kiss as light as the bottlenose dolphin cresting from the water,
Then night undressed and falling down like sliding beads of watery stars
From the wet coriaceous porpoise skin and a tail of silver fire.

To be hell ridden
of the itch of worry

are words I wish
I wrote

but alas
they are what I've found

more vestiges
of you

for much of what
I own

poetically is
yours

and the best
I can do

Something bad has happened, we've lost Dawn Wells.
Her friends and family must be going through Hell.
When we lose such a talented person, it's hard to understand.
For a few years she starred on "Gilligan's Island" as Mary Ann.

She died because of Covid-19 complications.
Her demise is sure to cause devastation.
Her family will find it hard to let go but they will have to try.
Dawn Wells has perished and it's sad to have to say goodbye.

Saturdays with Marilyn  

We float on the pool all afternoon, weightless, reading,
our minds in other times and places,
a toe against a wall sending us off
in other directions in a world slowly turning,
the sun over our shoulders now, and again in our faces,
listening without attending to a pump that could be
the sound of the ocean, aware of time only as shade
moving across the pool, and the hungry dog barking.
We are worlds the ants find and we send them swimming.

We pass each other, gently bumping now and then,
a togetherness of sympathetic rest,
a pause in years of joint and several lives
like islands that are parts of a single country,
separate universes, contradictory in terms,
but united in a fate that could have ancient roots.
Nothing is certain, they say, but attraction beats science.
Momentum and a breeze, energies that seem pointless,
are saving mercies in the last weeks of August.