We first laid eyes on you over drinks
and dinner in the Latin Quarter,
a short stroll from the Spanish Arch,  
its historical significance gone
in a heartbeat along with all
expectation of ambush
by austere beauty
on those wind swept stepping stones
Inishmore, Inishmaan and Inisheer.

The River Corrib gleams
like vintage vinyl beneath
Wolfe Tone Bridge,  
grainy and black as your liquid
image glowing serene on screen,
countless heartbeats of moonlight
mingling quayside with the sea
in a salty embrace that stings
my eyes and seizes me
by the throat.

The windows of St. Martin’s
frame the timeless river.
Soft chamois of morning lifts
the stubborn tarnish of dawn
from its braided embellished tales.  
We tuck into our full Irish and drink
watery coffee while you float outside
time to the rhythm of the tides
in your small brackish sea.

Years after giving up the game
for good I dream of turning
up late to a match juggling
my chipped red racquet,

high-impact lenses,
salt tanned right hand
glove and two
blue ***** fresh in the can,

my dream court receding
down darkened halls,
a warren of identical doors, square
portholes slashing avocado

carpet with watery cross ties,
florescent flickers that merge and pool,
flushing me into flat light within
a white cube to toe the red

service line once again only to find
my forehand serve impeded
by a jumble of tables,
five drawer files and armoires,

packing crates, roll top desks and bureaus
arranged into the crooked lane plat of medieval Bruges.  
Racquetball,
a game of angles

gone sadly out of fashion,
is the MacGuffin in my dream
as it was in my playing days
when you were always the real opponent,

King of Center Court
running me, stroking passing shots
while I dove heedless, headlong into walls,
losing on points, nursing my trophy of bruises.

Rainy Spring Morning

Rainy spring morning is older now
slower, less inclined to bound
up the down staircase or greet
dawn with a drop jaw slap
to the forehead, night
somehow no longer young, drinking
whole days in breathless gulps from a pail
knobby throat exposed, bobbing
lewd and naked, heedless
of a sopping shirt, unaware
exactly when he took to sipping primly
from the lip of the minute cup
a careful hand cupped to a careless chin
catching the gesture
in the window
above the sink
beneath the sleeve
of light that smears charcoal features
and quotes from windows past
the glow that drew him
on his way to school
tucked back in the shadow of huddled
trees, new leaves sluicing rain in whispers
onto the backs of sidewalk worms.  
Rainy spring morning twists the band
on his cudgel finger
mate to the one you wear
dialing in this hypnotic spell of molten gold
a boy for a moment  
lingering in front of a house
upturned palm catching creamy light
that runs through his fingers
and pools around his half buckled boots.

Lower, lower, a little more to the right, right,
so I work my way down ahead of the rain,
laboring under the gaze of a robin overseer
relaying your wanton desire in bossy birdsong.
She keeps an eye out for worms while I mind
the angle of the rake, ride grassy undulations,
tines biting into your arching back.

Felt Board

In Sunday school we strained

     to hear sandals scraping stone
             snap and crackle of kindling

     echo of gospel songs sung
                             in three part harmony

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego

     overlays free floating
                    smiles all around, fronting

    a fiery furnace more
                    beehive than crematorium  

Nebuchadnezzar scowling

     from the soft verge of his velvet palace
                  hush of orange aloe leaves

     licking the plush pink
            feet of an angel hovering over

the muffled din of a passing July morning.

Tig Coili

Gerry Mulholland sings
I come looking for a job
but I get no offers
just a come on from the ******
on Seventh Avenue
from a table top
on a borrowed guitar while
Johnnie Mullins adds in on
button accordion and harmony
rhyming ****** with Dewars
so soft so sweet whats left
to be done but smile
into this glass of Redbreast.

We Implore

How in Your name do you do it  
night and day, day and night,
weather the whiteout of words,

mad scribble of mother tongue,
those heart rending howls
packing power enough to jolt

stolen celestial cat naps
hunt You down holed up
under alias disguised

at the wispy tip of some
far flung finger of cloud or,
as I like to picture it, waiting

at a light draped low in a pearlescent
Lincoln MKZ with tinted windows,
following the progress of some pilgrim

brandishing a hand lettered sign
like the relic of a martyr, silently
praying for the green.

On Turning Sixty-One

Fitzgerald’s last line,
longing rendered in

fourteen words, ode to
inevitability uttered

in any tongue. “So we beat
on” aching,

“boats against the current”
our urgent

she bu de!, she bu de!/
I can’t bear

to let go!, “borne back”
by music

in the Latin,
de mihi tempus/

give me more
time, echoing

“ceaselessly
into the past.”

Driving In Ireland

Try buttering toast with a tulip
on horseback.  Skittish nag, twisted chaps,
flogging a slice, reins in your teeth,
waving a battered Black Parrot  
heading a slow parade.

“He also saw the cook’s cat which could do somersaults.”  

At least that’s what the cook said,
a claim the cat, shapeless sack
of snide, deigned neither to confirm

nor deny, content to ****
long afternoons in desultory

elongation, stationed
on the window sill above
the blackened eight burner Garland.

Once, when the cook stepped outside
to smoke, the cat, mood sour,

expansive, airily confided
the corpulent cook could climb
stairs on his hands while whistling

“Parlez-Moi d’Amour”
then spat in the soup, dispelling

any lingering incredulity,
his stomach duly nailing
a flawless double backflip.

Paul Irving Precedes Me

It’s been said we process through life
leading our own parade, fronting
our second line, wielding a flaming baton

igniting black powder twists to toss
at cheering throngs, though truth be told
I prefer metaphor with less pizazz

something a bit more staid and buttoned
down, protocols clear.  As I make my way
I wish to be preceded by Paul Irving

a stern, eagle beaked fellow,  
House Sergeant-At-Arms, a man given
to regular habits, a guy who knows

exactly where we’re headed and how
to get there.  Paul can be relied upon to
part the waters, stem the flood of

well-wishers with which I must
contend every day, dragging me by my
lapels, bald head pivoting, eyes steely,

scanning the room for trouble, alert to
roadblocks, those bent on delay, keen
to deliver me to my final address.

Still Life With Apples

Cezanne would ignore the grain
omit the quarter moon flute
burned quarter inch deep
pay scant attention
to your recollection  
of the barn in Armada
rinsed to a rumor of red
listen politely as you paint
a picture of the man who ran
the orphanage for bedsteads
wardrobes and sideboards
steal glances at his watch
while you play both parts
retelling the horse trade
eyebrows frantic to escape
gravity
your own straining
to lift off and boomerang
around the circumference of the table
lighting on the ordinal
points of countless dinners
apples
in the mind’s eye of the artist
flocking like birds
defying gravity
on the dizzy oval of oak.

Forgotten Printmakers of the 19th Century

Scent of wet leaves
sharp signpost leavings
on every rock and tree
from here to The Women’s Club turnaround
expectation of another stale treat
from the sidewalk bin at Café Muse
sheer ecstasy of your kind on leash
in numbers enough to banish
any thought of Sir Francis Seymour Haden
not to mention Adolphe Marie Timothée Beaufrere
and that unabashed vulgarian Louis Legrand
from the soulful clutter inside your head.
Edgar Chahine and Paul Gavarni
even Achille Deveria
are absent from my own
this autumn afternoon
still swimming with the artless
death of my mother
grateful on this end of the leash
to be led back home
in such agreeable silence.

Lines Laid Down By Others

Days of measles spent cloaked in twilight
Veil of curtains and dime store sunglasses  
Between me and a sun gone dark with evil intent
Hell bent on robbing my sight while I was busy
Looking inward tallying wage against sin
Bedeviled by an itch that needed scratching
Hands sheathed in white tube sock condoms  
To ward off nails rendered poison as the fer-de-lance
Snakes that glared back from steamy jungle overlays
In the World Book Encyclopedia, cotton prophylactics
Incompatible with the proper grip of a crayon  
But the germ of a lifelong refusal to stay
Inside lines laid down by others.

Ukiyo-e

Thin curls coaxed from the grain
released from all claim by the dogged
rooting of the spoon gouge

bone white ribbon
easing itself to the fragrant floor
spiral cherry rivulet lost in the churn

at the feet of the carver, the first
thing I remember. A churlish man
as I recall, the burl of his squint

screening detail and smoke
from his cigarette, blue double
helix rising in mirror image

a lowering ceiling steeping
his head in stormy weather
gimlet eye weighing heavy seas

a tempest lipping
the canted rim of a petal thin
tea cup, striated wave

reaching for the heavens
top lopped clean by sheering wind
the fluter and the veiner alive and biting

in the hands of the carver who cuts me free
at last, rendered in stark relief at
the boiling crest of the surf break.

Rain, Steam and Speed-The Great Western Railway
(J. M. W. Turner)

Life between the rails
Price paid for rhythm
Working its way
Into the conversation we have
With the couple from Kamloops
Over drinks in the bar car
Elongated shadows of stem ware
Clocking snow white prairie  
Dotted with one stoplight words
Nothing more
Than a few boarded up syllables
Struggling vowels of a diner
Slash package store
Emphatic final
Consonants of grain elevators
Trailing off into long stretches of silence
Stealing glimpses of the future
On grand sweeping curves
While the past rifles
Our pockets on the perfect
Parallel track of the here and now.

Our Science Film

Autumn colors leave me
Pining for black and white
Grammar school reel to reel
Science films snaking through
Rackety Cold War projectors
Chalk motes swarming
Cones of gibbering light
Can-do voice-overs
Always a hiccup off
Read by radio men
Sporting pale miens
Pie plate headphones
Brylcreem slick
Perhaps a Scholastic
Short featuring winsome
Child actors playing
You and me
Button noses
Wrinkled in stricken
Joy at a baby bunny
Wide eyed and stock still
In an apple crate
Beneath an apple tree
Leaves schooling in binary
Shimmer on the summer
Breeze blowing through our film
An introduction to photosynthesis
Or the metamorphosis of caterpillars
It matters little to you
Beribboned in gingham
Or me flying flapping
Dungarees
Platinum hair
Whipping our faces
Sky a china white
Behind ivory billows
Framed forever
Dimpled and laughing
Milkweed exploding
From our fingers like secrets
Shared in alabaster
Sign language.

Gettysburg Address

A diaspora of stones make their way back, posted
by penitents keen to relieve long years of suffering.  
Late at night under desk light they put pen to paper,
insert shims of confession to wedge bits of Pennsylvania

scree into envelopes, a wary eye on talismans cocooned
in twists of tissue or sealed up tight inside zip lock bags,
ancient Alleghany seabed pocketed one hot August
afternoon in the Peach Orchard, palmed on impulse along

Cemetery Ridge, another bearing the mica glint that drew
the eye of a desultory adolescent moping in the long
shadow of Little Round Top twenty-three summers gone
now, before the untimely death of a sister or a budding career

in HR derailed on the heels of divorce, DUI and depression.  
How else to explain the plane crash, forfeiture of assets,
the shadow on the x-ray, the second one hundred year flood?  
In after hour twilight, tour buses long gone, gaudy chains

out on Route 15 humming, all with waits of an hour or more,
a National Park Service Ranger, a man about my age and mien,
doffs his flat brimmed lemon squeezer to retreat behind a desk,
leaf through a sheaf of petitions for mercy addressed in desperation.  

Silence pressing in from Culps Hill and Devils Den, the Wheatfield
and Seminary Ridge, he presses smooth a pane of stationary, eyes
closed, fingers brushing words of intention, box of stones at his feet,
heaped, indistinguishable as an unbroken line of advancing infantry.

Lines Laid Down By Others

Days of measles spent cloaked in twilight
Veil of curtains and dime store sunglasses  
Between me and a sun gone dark with evil intent
Hell bent on robbing my sight while I was busy
Looking inward tallying wage against sin
Bedeviled by an itch that needed scratching
Hands sheathed in white tube sock condoms  
To ward off nails rendered poison as the fer-de-lance
Snake that glared back from a steamy jungle
Overlay in the World Book Encyclopedia
Shelved for the sanctuary of a coloring book
Prophylactics and perpetual twilight incompatible
With proper grip and waltz of a crayon  
But the germ of a lifelong refusal to stay
Inside lines laid down by others.

Trinity

Three times
I’ve seen them
crossing the yard
but three weeks ago
led leashed by the dog
to the solemn Norway spruce
that celebrates mass
and blesses her gifts
her third offering that morning.

Enamel blue sky
after a three day snow
precise transverse incision
above the southern horizon
inscribed by a thieving sun
that pockets the night
in minute slivers
we’ll never miss.  

Motor drone
born full term
into silence
triplets
soothing themselves
a low hymn sung in one voice
graces the frame
at three o’clock
tacking west to skirt the zoo.

Slender as books
of stillborn poems
wing spans a third or better
the length of each slippery
yellow lozenge
nosing ahead
through alphabets
of airy verse hacked
to pieces in prop wash.

Details, details
devil detained at the boarding gate
pilots banking for their final run
feathering sticks
dipping wings
in watery sunlight
haloed crosses peeling off
one two three
the dog and me
retracing our steps
one short of a triumvirate.

Degas’s Shoulders

draw the eye
to rolling landscape

bald

above
blue tree line or
interrupted by
crenellated hedgerow
daubed with a satin butterfly

poised

to dry her wings
before clearing a rise
of clavicle
countryside set alight
where I wander
lost amid familiar landmarks.

Hand Built House

The foundation, we dug it by moonlight
spooning when shovels were scarce,
working from plans sketched in sand
at low tide, layout recalled from a dream
someone had in which the other tended bar,
a dive with a fresco so inviting our dreamer
stepped into it and beckoned the barkeep
to distraction, to abandon, to drift off humming
a work song, one we still like to sing
from scaffold, balanced on beams, writing
our grandchildren’s names in wet cement.
Rooms of small betrayals best forgotten,
foyers of words we can’t take back bricked
up and hung with samplers of forgiveness,
load bearing walls of faith that defy formulae,
infinite hallways of hope, the door to nowhere
that never fails to amuse when we need to laugh
to keep from crying.  There’s a window stuck,
won’t you take a look?  I’ll see to that shingle
before it rains.  Work, it’s never done, walls
that won’t paint themselves, our labor of love.

Years after giving up the game
for good I still dream of turning
up late to a match juggling
a chipped red racquet,

high-impact lenses,
salt tanned right hand
glove and two
blue ***** fresh in the can,

my dream court receding
down darkened halls,
a warren of identical doors,
portholes slashing avocado

carpet with watery cross ties,
florescent flickers that merge and pool,
flushing me into flat light within
a stark white cube to toe the red

service line once again
only to find my forehand
serve impeded by jumbled
tables, five drawer files, armoires, roll top desks and bureaus

arranged into the crooked lane plat of medieval Bruges.  
Racquetball,
a game of angles
gone sadly out of fashion,

the MacGuffin in my dreams,
as it was in my playing days
when you were my true opponent,
King of Center Court running me,

stroking passing shots, methodical
while I hurled myself heedless
headlong into walls, losing on points,
nursing trophies of bruises.

Virginia Lee Burton

It’s all in there, a blueprint
for living, my sacred text

perfect replacement for a world
of tired hotel Gideon’s, this tale

of a plucky fellow with an Irish
surname, unencumbered, set free

to roam at will, picking up work here
and there, more hedgehog than fox, a man

who did one thing and did it well.  He
wrestled with private doubts in the dark,

stretched out on top of Mary Anne,
the nights warm and clear, sky smeared

with stars, a man who knew how to
back up a claim, take a risk, court failure

and humiliation at the bottom of a deep,
perfectly excised hole, all four corners

neat and square.  My idea of a perfect ending,
a second chance, a mulligan, quietly tending

the boiler with a pipe and a good book,
waiting for you and your homemade pie.

Cava

We’ll order cava in smallish glasses
from the café with wispy tables on
the plaza pocked with sunburnt bullet holes

sprayed from the hips of passionate men
sporting snap brimmed hats dipped low on one side,
veiled arched shooting eyes righteous, unblinking,

dark slots that screened smoke from hand rolled
cigarettes, great-grandfathers perhaps to
our waiter and the fellow seated

at a table for two embroiled in a lilt
pas de deux that seems friendly enough to
a pair of short term expats who don’t speak

the lingo but savor it’s tuneful swing,
the parry and ****** of slender hands, pairs
of small deft birds winging this way and that

until one brace breaks off with a flourish
to nestle beneath a tray of smallish
glasses that lifts and soars, borne off on the

salty breeze while the other two alight
around a beaded glass of cava and
a lazy smoke, time marked in wispy whorls.

Spider Hatch

Charitable in her critique
my hope this morning
soap in eyes, steam
rising to buffet
the asterisk
on the ceiling
that qualifies a tepid
first impression or
dispatches me with a silken
“it’s much worse than I thought.”

Blank

Father was a quarryman, hands at home
On a welded wheel, fingers stiff waiting on sun
To clear the lip of the pit, an artist is his own right

Content to read the grain through an emery palm
Leave the rest to rain and wind.  Mother on the other
Hand was a chiseler with a syncopated mallet

No stranger to fluter and veiner, fine dust felting
Her coffee, laboring late, ankle deep in drifting flake
Humming as she whittled to the quick.  

One morning, seeing my chance, right hand freed
In the wee, wee hours, I hacked out feet and a face
Only a mother could love, raking footprints clean as I left.

Meeting Your Plane

The night nurse plane that ferried you home
Pulled covers of high desert blue over
The unmade bed of the day, careless meringue
In the rearview mirror, sanctification ahead
Drifting in the back pew of the cellphone lot
Dancing embers of arrivals and departures
From some distant bonfire where we huddle
Beneath a harvest moon, stars and planets
Skating holding patterns on a black ice pond.

The Last Bed We Buy

Grateful not to find myself
disembodied hovering high above
this stark cake of soap, gazing down
laboring to put names to faces, the couple
so familiar, side by side, palms down, still as

miller moths displayed on pins, I drift off  
to the drone of Bill or Ted, rumpled as
a morning after motel king intoning
soft or firm versus memory foam
or pillow top, hypoallergenic …

the last thing I hear before we fall
fast asleep spooning on a plush queen,
not too soft and not too hard, but just right,
satiny raft to ferry us the last stretch of river.
Waving like the Queen we float past the last new

roof over which we will preside, nod in solemn
recognition of our high efficiency gas furnace
apt to burn on years after I’m gone, applaud
politely what jolly well may be a farewell
drive north through the Tunnel of Trees

some biting October afternoon, weep
softly for our old squirrel chaser sawing
soft imprecations to hips gone tender some
blustery April night dog years from now, blow
low Bronx cheers in a fond adieu to life mediated

through screens. Even Bill or Ted knows that grace
lies just ahead around the next oxbow, leaves us
to dream, two dormice cupped in a leaf, rills
and eddies bearing us seaward, buoying us
downstream on softly rolling shoulders.

**** of Summer

Summer is dressed in her finest, a day spent at the beach
Shoreline stroll in black burkini, a walk out on the reach
But fall arrives with a nightstick to roust out all the crooks
Take it off gals or go back home, give those nuns the hook.

Donald Trump is off his meds, his rocker and the rails
Breitbart soars in media-world, alt-white the color of its sails
Ugly game within a game, give Hillary the ***** prize
Trump aims higher, Orwell-land, where two plus two is five.

Hillary Clinton wants my vote, got it stashed in a pickle jar
They snuck in wearing bandit masks when I was at the bar
Ransacked the place, her gang of thieves, Bill and some Wall Street thugs
She got my vote but I drew the line when she came back for a hug.

Our Revolution, rally true believers, Bernie’s still our man
Hot like a blintz on Clinton’s ***, but for Wasserman, it was in the can
Jeff Weaver at the wheel, twenty-seven dollar donations on the gas
Can’t this thing go faster? Jettison staffers and top it off with cash.

The Last Bed We Buy

Should I be grateful not to find myself
disembodied hovering high above this stark
cake of soap, gazing down, laboring to put
names to faces, the couple so familiar,
side by side, palms down, still as miller

moths displayed on pins, our salesman,
Bill or Ted, rumpled like a morning after
motel king, reading my mind, musing on
this pair of worn porcelain dolls
painted in chipped shades of hesitation?  

Soft or firm versus memory foam or pillow top?  

Hypoallergenic pipes Ted or Bill, the last thing
I hear before we drift off spooning on a queen,
one not too soft and not too hard, but just right,
a satiny raft to ferry us the final stretch of river.

Waving like Queens we float on by the last new
roof over which we will preside, a nod of recognition
for the last new water heater, too.  Applaud politely  
our farewell drive through the Tunnel of Trees

one biting October afternoon in the not so distant future.
Cluck our tongues for the poor dog snoring soft
imprecations to hips gone tender some coming
rainy April night.  Blow twin Bronx cheers,

fat, wet, and sloppy, as we bid adieu to one last
shameless act of televised hubris.  Grace lies
ahead around the next oxbow, two dormice
cupped in a leaf, rills and eddies conveying us
to the sea on softly rolling shoulders.

Morning Spider

What were you trying to say
from down the dry well
of the German coffee maker?  
A brusque “guten Morgan”
unworthy of the finesse required
to defeat the hinged plastic lid,
“****** off mate” belying
the English taste for tea,
begging bus fare for the Silk Road
transparent even without a bracing first cup.
A caution, then?  
Don’t leave bags unattended,
know the warning signs of stroke,
sleep like a baby
with two-step authentication?  
Choirmaster alone in the apse,
dwarfed by vaulting cathedral walls
soaring seamless into heavenly gloom,
where I hover on high, indifferent
god commanding flood water, bestowing
the random fly of mercy, deigning
to lower a spoon of salvation
while you weave a gossamer chorale, perhaps,
working the tiny shuttles your batons.

Dirt Daubers

They float in and out all day
long on low interest wings
cramped toes of abodes
accreting like tamped syllables
compressed into lines, bellow
bad things about the mothers of their
fellows from laced lattice work
**** like champs in the bushes
hip sprung and hands free
while I ignore the noise and hunch
over muddy simile, worry
concentric rings of rhythm  
into pages of imperfect tubes
just waiting for habitation.

Hand Built House
(anniversary poem)

The foundation we dug by moonlight  
spooning when shovels were scarce,
working from plans drawn up in sand
at low tide, layout recalled from a dream
one of us had in which the other tended bar,
a place with a fresco so inviting the dreamer
stepped in and beckoned the barkeep
to distraction, to abandon, to drift off
humming a work song, one we still sing
from scaffold, balanced on beams, writing
our grandchildren’s names in wet cement,
work that never ends, a labor of love.

I Posed For Matisse

He uncoils me like a skein of yarn
Paying out behind beach glass lenses
Scouring the remains of the day
For watery sifted light

His hand spry as a piper through
Twisted Hamelin streets
Spavined fingers confounded by buttons
Quick and nimble once again

Fat bolt of graphite swanning
Around an empty dance floor
To strains of a silent waltz
While my skin pools in goose flesh

Bobbin spun free, hip, *******, neck
Described in a dearth of line
God struck mute as I slip
Demurely behind the screen.

Sunset

Viking pyres sinking
by degrees from North Manitou
annealing the portside window

on an overnight flight to Dublin
spilling dye downtown high
above the left field bleachers

finger painting suburban skies
of my childhood racing
to beat the streetlights

floating fire on Lake Superior
too many times to count
Malibu two nights one July

sashaying drunk on magenta  
going off to pout in the dark
when I called you a show off

you’ve seen me at my worst
I know all your florid secrets
little wonder we’ve grown

to resemble one another
incandescent palettes leached
wicking gunmetal horizons.

Winter

On a beach last summer between
Munising and Grand Marais
a glitch in the space-time continuum
a case of Someone dropping the ball
rent a nasty tear in the firmament
a real doozy I would have missed
but for the high voltage bite of a stable fly
that wrenched me into the letter Z
upended the blue horizon long enough
to catch a glimpse of winter
gunmetal grey behind summers
drooping curtain, a fluke of nature
like the platypus
like a knuckleballer  
like improvisational jazz
but I still pause in warm April rain  
beneath golden autumn leaves
while pressing a beaded bottle of beer
to the scar on my neck
hot July afternoons and listen
for the icy bite of my name
a faint rhythm
building to crescendo.

Lines Laid Down By Others

Days of measles spent cloaked in darkness
Veil of curtains and dime store sunglasses  
Between me and a sun gone cold with evil intent

Hell bent on robbing me of sight while I was busy
Looking inward tallying up the wages of sin
Bedeviled by an itch that needed scratching

Hands sheathed in white tube sock condoms  
To ward off nails rendered, I’d been warned, poison
As the fer-de-lance snake that glared back from the jungle

Overlay in the World Book Encyclopedia
Slammed shut for the sanctuary of a coloring book
Prophylactics and perpetual twilight incompatible

With proper grip and waltz of a crayon
To stay inside lines laid down by others
Alone in the dark with nothing left to lose

But Roy Orbison shades and a pit viper
Coiled, biding time pressed between pages
Made as much sense as a malevolent sun.

Tableau

A cheddar wheel of morning sun
Grates up against the window screen
To curl in whorls into the room
Where side by side we sleep displayed
On shiny continental pins  
Rorschach pairs of papery wings
Masking luminescent sifted rind
Silhouettes nestled deep in drifts.

On Turning Sixty-One**

Fitzgerald’s last line;
longing, lovingly

rendered in fourteen
words, ode

to inevitability
in any tongue.

“So we beat on”,
aching,

“boats against the current”,
our urgent

she bu de!,
she bu de!/

I can’t bear
to let go!,

“borne back”
on music

in the Latin,
de mihi tempus/

give me more
time.  

Songs echo
“ceaselessly into the past.”

Eggs

It’s a habit of mine to pause a beat
to dwell on the egg, the essence
of ****, before I crack one ker-whack

on the yawning lip of the cast iron skillet
broken promise of shell a favorite
metaphor of poets, embryonic

and otherwise, pop and sizzle sunrise
of yolk a buttery shorthand for brains
hopelessly scrambled, fated for plating.

East Egg or West Egg?  The courtesy bay
glitters in the moonlight as I huddle
with the rest, slumped in thin tuxedos, eggs

balanced just so on shifting feet, poaching
ourselves advantageous angles, the light
on Daisy’s dock green as Seuss’s vile eggs.

Edgewood Elementary Spring Review

Richard Bryant played The Boy with me
in the role of The Father
inspired casting in the months following

The March On Washington
For Jobs And Freedom  
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

I recall Mr. Conti’s stage direction:
remain silent for one full minute before speaking.
Richard at my feet, flour in my hair.

Richard who lived
north of the plastics factory
in the colored trace cast

as an inquisitive child
to my detached adult
asked questions like

Why is the sky blue?
Which came first
the chicken or the egg?

My character puffed
on a prop pipe, hid behind
The Detroit Free Press, replied

I don’t know son again and again
conveying laconic vacuity
through clenched teeth.

I recall laughter when Richard
telegraphed my punchline
Son, how are you going to learn anything if you don’t …

Perhaps Mr. Conti
would have revised the script
had he any inkling of the uprising

that would consume the city
in three short years or written
new dialogue fifty-five years later:

A grave father explaining
survival to his wide eyed son
in an enlightened age.

Short Fiction

Before sitting down to write a story
I’ll think up a character with a few
miles on him but not so many as to
put him to sleep by nine leaving our eager
third person narrator little to do
but describe the layout of the bedroom
furniture of uneven pedigree
clutter enough to suggest spiritual disarray
well within acceptable limits
but worth keeping an eye on
suggesting sotto voce a second character
someone with a few hours to ****
in Wiesbaden or Banda Aceh
poling a spoon through black coffee
gone cold in a spider vein cup
the slightest shift of a knee twisting
the plot around the discovery of a memory
stick taped to the underside of his café table
“Marnie-LA” labeled in red.  
I write some muscular verbs to wrestle
him onto to an overnight train to Split and shift
to an unreliable first person singular
narrator who finds himself wincing
into a coffee cup at daybreak
feathery words crumpled on the grass
beneath the window
confused by their own reflection.

Brief Affair

Word was things had grown  
Stale between them
Sleek as she is
Him handy in a tight spot

But the other night
When I flipped
On the bathroom light
I found them trading

Tangent points on the vanity
Bristles deeply meshed
Handles lightly touching
The envy of those two

Coffee lovin’ Joe’s in the kitchen
Spotted later side by side
In the sink, rims stealing
A figure eight kiss of infinity

Sharing a bit of undergarment
Gossip, a rumored stowaway
Discovered fresh
From the dryer burrowed

Within a pair of my own.
Hell, I wore them that way
Who am I to judge
Their brief affair.

Cemetery Beautiful, Avenue Love, Row Paradise

Coordinates given by poets
Will take you in circles
Business forgotten in the search
For words to compare a rainy afternoon
To a blue boat with a white sail
Best all of them chose
Cremation in the end
Ashes scattered to the four winds
Like milkweed in spring.

Strong Man

Sleep sound and dream sweet dreams
A strong man at the switch
Trouble no more, all peaches and cream
A strong man with an itch

Head for the mall, work on your tan
A strong man has your back
When things go south, he has a plan
A strong man, toward tyranny he’ll tack.

The Last Bed

I should be grateful not to find myself disembodied,
hovering high above this stark cake of soap,
gazing down laboring to put names to faces,

the couple so familiar, side by side, palms down,
still as miller moths displayed on pins, our salesman,
Bill or Ted, rumpled like a morning after
motel king, reading my mind, musing
on this pair of worn porcelain dolls
painted in chipped shades of hesitation.  

Soft or firm versus memory foam or pillow top?  
Hypoallergenic, says Ted or Bill, the last thing
I hear before we drift off spooning on a queen
that is not too soft and not too hard, but just right
for ferrying us down this final stretch of river

past the last roof we’ll put on the house,
one last drive through the Tunnel of Trees,
the dog snoring soft imprecations to tender hips
on his old bed some rainy April night.

Two dormice cupped in a leaf
rills and eddies conveying us to the sea
on softly rolling shoulders.

Lost, Night Coming On

Sun going down on a six mile walk
honed our shadows to Giacometti bronze,  
three old friends, a bit of spring yet in their step,
streetlights sputtering indignation at a dismal election
more referendum on the Enlightenment itself,
casting us, perhaps, in unflattering light,
a triptych of angry white men wreathed
in the sour mist of resentment for all you knew,
bas relief of your shadowed face
a dry wadi of worry framed with care within
the folds of your headscarf.  Desperation,
oncoming night, courage in the face of our
disgraceful descent into darkness,
God only knows what drove you
to ignore the little voice in your head,
pull the car to the curb and ask
the way to the local community college
just a few blocks south on Washington, past
the first light, parking garage on your left,
you can’t miss it, finning my hand
down the street, past the bar
where soon we would huddle over beer,
watching in disbelief, news of night
coming on.

Roger Angell In Central Park

My wife was game to change
direction when I wondered
out loud if you were the man

on the bench in the sun
minding his own business
beneath a Mets cap, perhaps

contemplating yet another
major league season or
daffodils and Spanish bluebells

blooming on Cedar Hill
enjoying his solitude on a fine
spring morning much like my

long dead father glimpsed
moments before basking
shirt off in the Sheep Meadow

the sanctity of privacy
and nothing more
I tell myself, steering us  

across the 79th Street Traverse
toward the teeming refuge
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Catch

Eternal summer spent back peddling
on your lofted rocket
through leafy canopy
teeming careless at the ragged
edges on slender stems, chastened
by autumn pooling gold while I wade
gloved through swirling eddies
engulfing parked cars
losing the ball against chalk
white skies stricken with dripping
black lattice, misjudging
the parabolic frown while robins
hawk spring like it was something
new and improved
snagging the ball
on the run, in the webbing, at the curb
sun spackled and off my stride
for the return throw
taking time to plant my feet and read
the Braille of stitching
your farewell note
with post script
to tell me you remembered
to pack your glove.