There is this fish who shares my office
I feed him and he has certain rules:
No noisy exchanges with the crab,
(the crab is territorial so this must be hard for the fish)
No staring at me, though I can stare at him,
and above all
No criticism of what I do.

He is my friend because he does these things perfectly

My other friends are mostly human
My best friend is a woman who married me
They are not like the fish, which gives me trouble sometimes
I give them trouble too, I think,
But it usually works out.

When it doesn't, I always have the fish
And if he's too busy, there is the plant in the corner
Who has stood by me for years.

Life is so expensive
The cost is not in gold,
But in effort we pay, and pain we endure,
And the compromises we make for love.

The beauty of life is that we do these things and enjoy
The moments when the cost seems small for the experience.

But she sold it for a needle full of junk

And we let her, you and I…

It is the dark place at the end of the road we travel
And that darkness scares us, but it also beckons.
Seductively it calls with lies of an end to pain,
"Show them what they have done." the darkness whispers then demands.  
"Show them."

We all have heard, some have believed.
People with everything who could not see their worth.
People with options who could not find hope.
People who could only feel pain in the arms of love.

They dive recklessly into the cold dark water and are lost
To us, but not to all
For there is light beyond the darkness that beckons too
And the journey home is longer but no less sure
For all of them.  For all of us.
Peace, Robin, fly true.

The big clouds came back today,
Rolling up over the western horizon in full sail.
Fleets of them.  An Armada reconnoitering in force
For General Winter, who is in the rear waiting for
The campaign season to attack.

Softly they sail on winds that brought the hummingbirds
Then turned cool as the days shortened and the sun more scarce.

I cannot turn away though I know what is coming as we all know.
I find I no longer care that it comes for me.
I spent my spring unheeding and my summer foolishly
But I have always loved the autumn, which is fading into
Memories I shall carry into the cold winter I cannot escape.

I wonder will I have them there or if there is anything at all.

I live in the corners now where the light is a reflection
and the shadows are real:

The comforting shadows of what was and the
painful shadows of what was expected.

My corner is crowded with transients, like me, pulled
slowly or fast, into the farthest nooks where they are
finally lost to the ephemeral light of here and now.  

It's hard to remember some of them, glad they are gone in fact;
Others are seared in my consciousness, smiling there as when
we shared the light that seemed everlasting as the sun.

But not even the sun is forever.

So I look for something beyond the nooks where my friends
and loves and dreams have gone.

I will tell you, who are still in the light, truly from the shadows
of the corner: only love and hope and Love will mean anything
when you reach this place.

And you will be here too soon.

Early fall colors are matted down. flags are dead, stuck to their poles.
People hustle as they walk bent over in hoods that hide their faces.

Hours ago there was the sun and warmth, pretty leaves, smiles.

Hours before that I was young and the sun never went down.

Then my rains started and my head went down.
The rain left lines as it ran down my face
I couldn't walk as fast, I hid inside from storms that always found me.   
Faces I knew turned down to avoid the rain,
I cannot see them now from here except in pictures
Taken when the sun shone and we all could smile.

Yet there is a fire in our hearth and one face that smiles
Though she too had been out in the rain
Until we came in together and found a place to keep warm.
In that the rains have served us well.

I am not sure when the Anger first whispered to him
or how he treated it then
or when it became his companion and then his friend

or when it took possession of him and crowded the rest of us out of his life

But the Anger owns him now and sold shares of his life
to paranoia and fear and hopelessness at ever being loved
or loving…

He was a good kid and would be a good man
                      but for his master that compels
his rage and distrust of the ones who love him

And I wonder if he will ever find the freedom he thinks he gains by pushing us away

Long ago the tree was strong and green,
But that was when the air was clean
And the water that fell as rain was not tainted.
So it grew and ignored what was happening
Reaching only for the constant sun that gave it life.

It slept through winters and sprouted every spring
As the earth turned and lesser lives were lived and lost
Always turning its branches to gather the light
Sinking deeper its roots to stand taller,
Time moved slower for the tree, but it moved nonetheless

It moved.

The weakness came slowly, creeping into its roots
From the soil that caught the tainted rain
Its leaves were less each season, less light was gathered
The winters grew longer and more brutal
He could not reach so high, though he tried.

And the time came when no leaves grew, but he was not gone
He stood his ground with bare arms stretching still
For the sun, who had never left him.
He stands there now, not forever, but long enough
For us to see the haunting beauty of a life now gone
Who in his time was a giant.

We work together in the day,
But it isn't Us that rumbles through cases
And put out fires and deal with unreasonable people,
It is our lawyer avatars doing what must be done.

I see you though in moments…

It is not Us who do what we can to blend families
Who do not recognize the concept of family as
Applied to them in the context of you and I,
It is our ever hopeful avatars straining at them and each other.

I see you though in moments…

In the night when we are alone, or when we play and laugh,
And always when we touch,
I see you then and clearly and I know this is Us
That survived the rest of it to find each other
And travel together in love.

I don't want to be here anymore.
  Not just here, anywhere.
I rode through moments
  That hung on me like a chain of
Black pearls which got so heavy I
  Can't lift my head anymore to see what's
Coming.  If I could, I'd only regret it.
The pressure to be what was expected
   Built too high while no one had the pressure
To be what they promised.
  The expectations killed me


I don't want to be here anymore.  
  The reason I am is cowardice
Because I know this place and I can only
  Guess what's next.

If you can read this or hear it or ever knew it existed, I still love you.

No matter what may have passed or where we may be
or if I am gone, I still love you.

If the stars are still burning or if they have burned
themselves out and all that is left is emptiness, I still love you.

Only truth transcends and survives the fiction we call reality.
The truth between us is, and will always be,

I still love you.

"55 years,” she said, “That’s a long time.”
She couldn’t know the length meant nothing
What mattered were the moments
We did unforgettable things together.

Unforgettable only to us because they were ours
As we walked, ran, and fell through our youth
Burning past loves that were not
And challenges that were
All of which left movies in my mind
Of what we did when the future was limitless
And all that happened in the years it narrowed
Turning us into flawed men who
Tried hard nonetheless not to be.

55 years of who we were together from then
To today when a voice on a cellphone
Said, “He passed peacefully.”

I find no peace in this and
I will tell him so when the time comes.

Breathe with me as we
Lay together.  
Feel my heart's union with yours
And let this night go on forever
By repeating it into
Eternity.

I wonder why I am here so I pick over all the little
Things, and some of the big ones, that
Fell into my life.  
I hold them up like a jeweler and examine them
For flaws, or causation…but I don't really see
Them clearly through the loupe of my
Memory where I am always in the right and the aggrieved
And the righteous one who was let down..

And I wonder why that is.

But I know now I wasn't always the hero and I think
I can live with that, though I still don't like it.
I turn my face skyward and pray for forgiveness, realizing that
I also have to forgive, and I don't like that much either.

And I still wonder why I am here and if it made a difference
To anyone…

And then I think of you reading this jumbled mess from
An old(er) man who knows the best stops are in the rear view mirror…
I wonder what I should tell you that would make your minute here
Worthwhile and it comes to me.

Don't wonder, live.

I look at him, not for the first time,
And wonder what is happening behind his eyes.
He is older now, white hair, longer
Than when he played football
Then gave it up for something more practical.

Settled that is, he won’t admit it
And he won’t admit he’s settled too often in life;
But I know all his secrets sooner or later.

I have seen him since we were very young,
Most of the time we get along.
Sometimes we fight, but I’ve learned to co-exist

Today he’s like a stranger to me.
I can’t read him and I don’t know
What he plans to do with himself.
I lean with my hands on the sink and
Stare at him, but there are no clues
In the mirror

I say I know you, but perhaps I only know
What you want me to see
Or what I hope you are as you bend here
And twist there to conform what you can
To what you think I want.

And I bend the tunnels of my reason to fit your contortions
So I may fit them to the conclusion that I know you.

You do this for me, too.

So we live, an accommodation each to the other;
A compromise born from knowledge we learned
From those we knew who could not learn,
Who could never know either of us.

And in the moments we are close I must touch you
In ways I could never do before or will again
Because the force that gives us strength to blend
Is that over used word that means
We have built of ourselves a home that we will never leave.

I was lost searching for things
I should have had…
Or so I believed
And the search took me past thresholds
I never would have crossed but the quest
became something alive, calling to me
at first then demanding when I gave it the power to do so
as the combination of desire and frustration
drove me past the limits of my mores…
And I was lost
And I was punished
And in the depths of that was
despair known only to the powerless who had once had power
then lost it to misuse.
In that pit reason returned and I knew the fault
was mine, so I prayed sincerely like a child.
Slowly time passed and I became who I was again.
But I was lost away from my world, your world, the world.

And then he found me, the one of ninety nine, and through the
instrument of those I had scorned he brought me out
to live among the world again.

I shall never go back, for in that pit I found the tools to know
What counted.

And I had it all along.

Mom’s gone, taken when she was younger than me
By a bubble in a vein which had nothing better to do
Than break four hearts and send us spinning away from
Each other having lost the gravity of her love.

Every Thursday and Sunday she fed us what we
Called spaghetti, pasta being now the more fashionable word.
It came from her heart because that's how she was with us.
She cooked the sauce the night before then cooled it
In the refrigerator so the flavors would meld like
She melded us into more than we were, a family,
My family of whom my best memories died with her.

I see us eating together when we still had smiles for each other.
My brother and sister, who now hate the world,
And dad, who would always take a bite and say,
“Catherine, your sauce is like gold. Pure gold”.
She glowed every time he said it and he said it every time
We sat around her table eating pasta.

Mom knew we weren't sharing a meal when we ate her pasta.  
We were sharing her love for us and, in those days, each other.  

But my mother’s love is gone now like my youth and our family.
Irrevocably.  All of them.  Gone.  And I am less for it.

But I have those memories of Mom and the Family she made of us.
They fill me like her pasta covered with golden sauce once did.
Too bad you can't go home again...too bad.

The petals which had been so red
Are browning now and bow their heads
The limbs which held the greening leaves
Are garish colors now instead.

Everywhere that I can see
Summer is prepared to flee
From cooler days the autumn brings
Before the winter's frigid sleep

I stand among the morbid scenes
Of the dying beauty Nature gleans
By calling back what She bestowed
To the earth with summer's heat

They'll rise when springtime melts the snow
I wonder if the same is so
For me once I am put to rest
I wonder, will I even know?

I knew better, I’d been warned
By people I trusted.
But I ignored them thinking
They just didn’t understand.

How could they know this moment
Of mine when the apple seemed
So close and looked so ripe.

They couldn’t see her there
Half in the shadows watching me.
Who else but me felt my frustration
And the buzz of alcohol that enhanced it?

Oh, I knew who she was, where she’d been.
I know what she’d done and with who.
I even know she talked about it
So she could ruin the lives she’d never have.

But I was angry, a little drunk and had
Been rebuffed for a sin I didn’t commit
And couldn’t remember, which was a worse sin.
So I slammed a few doors and left.

Now here she was, my real sin
Waiting for a decision.

I drained my glass and stared at it
Convincing myself to step outside
Who I said I was and swore to be…

Then I turned and I saw her
Walking away, holding the hand
Of a man whose face I couldn't see.

She smiled looking back then shrugged
And I felt an impossibly heavy weight
I had not been aware of
Fall off my shoulders.

The dark heart of the night
Is close around me;
There is nothing to see but what
Spins through my mind;
There’s not much comfort in that

All the fears and failures dance together
At a party in my honor laughing like the old friends
They are not, mocking me they ask,
“Remember me”?

And I do and I feel again what I felt
And another space of my life is lost to it.

I feel the sweat, fists clenched.
My legs jumpy.  
But there’s no one to punch and no use
Trying to run away.

You can’t escape what you
Carry in your mind, and they know it.
So they laugh at me again.

Where the hell is the sun?

I knew he wasn’t there, but I had to stop
Tried to drive by.  Couldn’t do it
So I pulled up to the glass wall he sat behind
All those years in exile from what
Should have been his and looked in to see
Where he’d been the last time I spoke to him.

No surprise, he wasn’t there just shock
He’d never be again.

They hadn’t taken his things.  
His glasses were still there and car keys;
A picture of his kids.
Business cards with his picture.

I went in pretending he’d walk in from
Somewhere in the back and say hello
Then tell me to get a haircut like he always did.
He didn’t walk in..
“No gots,” he used to say
When something didn’t happen.

No gots anymore.
He’s gone and he took a part of me with him.
But I took one of his cards
Just in case I need some advice.

The core of me holds the truth I have
Hidden so well I don’t really
Think about it anymore.

I am more concerned with the story of who I am
That I tell to anyone who will listen.
I don’t think I’m a liar because
Everyone is hiding something
For some good reason
That no one else needs to know.

But the hidden truth leaks out
No matter how we twist the story around it.
It comes to us in dreams and,
When the voice beneath our reason shouts
Louder than our doubts and denials,
We hear it demanding to be free.

Some of us us comply
Releasing our truth carefully between
Crooked marks on pages others read.
Carefully I said, in tentative bits
Hoping for acceptance
We fear will never come.

And yet we write
Because we are helpless to hide
The truth that cannot be denied.
Thank God.

I was born in a red brick hospital
when doctors still came to the house
and nurses were nice older ladies of 35.

The town was small but large
enough for us to play together
while our parents had coffee
without worrying who had invited whom.

Good things, happy things went on then.
The proud men worked the plants
while our mothers made our homes
and no one said either was the lesser.

I grew up in this believing the life was endless.
Then the town got big and the people shrank.
Concerns became fears and fears reality.
Today I saw a bulldozer destroy the old hospital.

It was many years too late to do any damage.

You feel it first with a sense left over
From when we lived in trees,
The force of it gathering miles away makes you aware.
Across the lake darkness falls in the afternoon
The waves grow short white manes
As they come now more quickly to the shore.
The temperature drops and a fresh breeze
Leads the way for black clouds that boil and gather
Coming now, coming harder, smothering the sun.
Beneath them is the dark veil of the rain marching.
You can smell it as it advances, a force men could
Never stop.  It comes, leaving a million scars on the water
In explosions adding volume to the noise of the waves.
The wind comes hard and I stand holding
The rail on a deck above the lake when
The first bolt sears the sky and roars.
I close my eyes and the rain washes over me
So cold there are no thoughts, just the
Feeling that for a moment I am clean.

Heroes who were gather at the round table
Under Valhalla’s Golden Arches
Recounting the legends they lived.

They forget now the events of their day
But recall forever the moments of their glory
And the loves they lost who beckon from further on.
Their peers are fewer each year, their families
Shrink and turn from the old and trusted ways.
Most are alone but for comrades around the table
And none know who will be the next to disappear.

The tales grow with age as does their
Wisdom of how the world beyond the Arches
May be saved.  Their hearts are pure in this
Though their scars real and imagined, lend
Perspectives not all accept, but they are to be forgiven
For these are survivors of the tragedies of life.

For years I admired them, listening to the
Stories of their bygone world.
I think of them often now as I sit at
Their table watching the door for my friends.

I slumped into my friend the chair and
Waited for sleep to carry me away somewhere
While reruns reinforced my nightly monotony.
,

Then the first wind of autumn ran ahead
Of its due date and rattled my windows rousing me.
I raised up and killed the tv.
Soft amber lamp light filled the room
And I could hear the low roar of the lake
Rolling under the wind.

I got up and opened the door to the deck
Then closed it behind me.

The wind carried the lake up to me
While the constellations danced through
The moonless sky.
The glow of Port Stanley rose from
The far horizon, between us one of the last
Boats of the year struggled against the
Wind and waves, making for Detroit.

The moment pulled me out of myself
My name was lost, my hopes and desires meaningless;
I became the smallest part of the endless night
Whose purpose was to be no more than this.

But the chill is more at home here
Than a human trespasser;
It drove me back toward
The mediocrity that sustains me.

One last look across the lake
Wondering if a Canadian stands on his
Deck wondering about me…

He sat at a table in a suit that didn’t fit.
His shirt was open, a tie stretched across the void.
His eyes were forward, scared
Hands on the table gripped together so they didn’t shake.

The eyes that looked at him were not friendly
Most focused on photographs in easels
Showing what had become of a girl who made a bad choice
Then came back and made it again and again until
The power to choose was no longer hers.

A woman in a black robe sat above him reading
Then raised her head to look down,
“Do you have anything to say?”

Now they all looked at him as he rose,
If their stares had power he would have been dust.
Behind him one poor woman wept
In a room pressurized by silence.

A man stood beside him, leaning away.
The monster swallowed once gathering his power
To twist their thoughts as he had the girl in the pictures.
He made himself weep then in a shaking voice said,
“I loved her to death.  She was my everything”.

But the woman in the robe was that day deaf.

He sends us here for a moment
When the best of us burn with desires and needs
And the drives to light the world.

Others hang back in the dark,
Content with the anonymity of the blackness,
Comforted by letting leaders lead;
Even false ones whose excesses force them
Out to make things right again
So they can drop back into the limbo
Of ordinary lives where soaps and football reign.

And we do it all in moments,
Blazing time that is to short to count
From the stars.

There is a train beyond my window tonight.
Far away it is, too far to hear the wheels.
Only the whistle calls lonely in the night,
Reaching me here in my exile
From who I should have been.

How I wish I were among the passengers
Bolting through the night aboard a
Fate that couldn’t be derailed by foolish choices
Or missed opportunity…or fear.
Sliding past the landscape in the night
Sure of arriving where you belong.

In my memory I feel the sharp edges of
My Broken dreams and recall the times
When the train that carried me was still on time.
That was then, now I lay awake and listen
To the whistle in the night and imagine
What might have been.

Her face was an indifferent mask
As I questioned her about
The child she was surrendering.
She confirmed the neglect
As if she forgot to feed a dog.

We went on together playing
The unfeeling ***** and the annoyed
Young lawyer feeling the power
Of who he thought he was.

The questions narrowed and
She fidgeted, then squirmed, then
A few tears leaked and the boy
Playing lawyer woke up
When he saw what I was doing
And how I was doing it.

He fought me with thoughts of
Our mother, and pity, and mercy;
But the lawyer had to continue
Even if his voice lost the condescension.
He went on as the girl playing *****
Began to sob then fell apart
When she said, “Yes,”

The boy became a man
Who has never forgiven the lawyer.

He’s hooked to tubes and monitors;
They speak to him hoping he will hear.
People test and probe reducing
Him to an experiment in a bizarre
Science fair where the best result is disability.

They cry for him, hope for him, pray for him
As the machines, hum, pump, and chime
To keep whatever he will be now alive.

I cannot see him there, but I remember
Days on football fields when we were young
Nights at dances with girls who teased us
In the clinches and sent us home alone.

He sold me my first car and we got old together
But not gracefully, not us.
We struggled against who we were
Trying to be who we thought we could become.
Failing and succeeding as we went;
Always friends who sometimes fought.


So much I remember as I lay here,
Safe until it’s my turn, and I wonder if he
Remembers who we were in that awful place where
They pray and hope to save what’s left
Of a good man’s life.

The good things vary depending on
Who you are, where you live, how you think
And what you want.

But somewhere underneath the value given variations
Is the invariable truth that life is a tragedy
In which we play a role defining what we believe it to mean.

Played for the moment or the geld, life bores.
Motivated by self, it fails to satisfy.
Driven by scorn or anger it is best not lived

Life’s brief play is the chance to share
The depths of us with those who
Lend meaning to our existence.

Played true, the tragedy can be endured .

A quiet moment gathers itself around me
As I stare at pixels looking among them
For something great and compelling to write about.
But there is no wisdom tonight, no passion,
I am even empty of the need to cry for change.

I grow so tired as the quiet closes tighter,
Drowning out life by calling for sleep.
I drift  away and dreams of great themes come to
Me like old friends calling  to talk over coffee.

They are around me and we laugh,
Some make me cry, others...
Well, there are others too and I feel in tune with them
As I  never am awake.

They listen to me judging the worth of my insight.
Some smile, others chuckle and scratch their heads
As I try to fit in knowing I never will
Even though I will always try.
God, I love what I think I can make of them.

There is a nudge on my thigh,
They fade away as I wake then they are gone.
There is only me, the empty screen and my dog
Whose world is defined by where I am,
He brought me back to toss his ball.

My themes are lost in Morpheus' mists
They will be back one at a time and I will write
Inadequately of wonderful things with high meanings

Until them, I make these crooked marks for you...
Because, it seems, my world is defined
By where you can find my words.

Clearing out boxes holding once
Cherished things, there was your photo, smiling
When once upon a time
Was still ahead of us
And our minds were full
Of excited emotions I no longer recall

We burned then like a fresh struck match
That flares for an instant, then
Settles into a fire that dies
Before the stem’s consumed.

I shake my head to think of
How I burned for you
And then the hopeless depths where
I sank when the fire died first for you.

Your picture is like a grade school drawing now;
An amusing curiosity I barely recognize
As having once been mine.

For I now know the slow burning fire
Which lasts a lifetime
And maybe more because the fuel is
In the soul and not the *****.

I burned your picture today and didn’t feel a thing.

The air is too calm to bother with movement
The dew is too fresh to soil with my shoes
My body too old to push any further
How lovely to lie here with nothing to do

God, forgive me my thoughts.
Look pst my whims and follies.
Excuse, if you only will, the moments
Of my weakness when my humanity overcame
What I knew I should have done.

Please hear me now as I cry from
This tragedy which is the Test You
Have given us.

Let me find my way Home.

She carries the weight of simple things
Forgotten people cannot carry for themselves:  
Where to sleep, staying safe,
How to eat enough without selling yourself.

She works in an office smaller than a closet.
There is a picture on her desk of the day they opened.
She stands between ragged people and
Smiling politicians wearing suits in an election year.
None of the suits has been back since, but she is here
Working among the lost souls and feeling guilty
For going to a home with heat, a bed, and food.

She remembers best the ones she loses,
And the rate of what she thinks of as her failure
Would drive her to quit if it were not impossible
To forget the next one who comes to her may be
The one who needed her most.

You don’t know the power compressed
In the gentle aspect of you,
The strength in a mindless gesture.
The force in a glance
The fearful energy contained in your whisper.

All I am and strive for would be lost
In the darkness of your indifference
Or shredded by a disproving look.

And if you willed it you could make me
What I should become, half a life
Made whole by the union of
Two souls who first met within
The mind of God.

He would’ve made you first if He thought about it
Maybe He did, make your first I mean,
because you are the fountain of everything.
And it grows uncontrollably from your bounty
Which is, I think, where we come in
Jealous we can help start but cannot  create life
So we give it order which so easily goes too far
And only has value when paired with your nurturing grace.

I suppose that’s why there is you and me and
Why, in our case, it’s good.

They are derelicts now in a lonely
Part of town even stray dogs avoid.
Broken, defiled, empty of the lives
Who made them roar and slam with
Machines building a nation, then defending it

Now they are empty, their purpose evicted
Then sold to lower bidders from lands they had to conquer;
Places making lesser versions of what they built with pride

The people they held bore children who
Prospered from what they made then
Shunned the labor which elevated them

But decay can’t change what they were
There are signs of it everywhere
Frescoes and cornices, brickwork and
Fading symbols defying the abandonment
Forced upon them

It strikes me now how similar we are

I looked away and you were gone.
Though I can still feel you here,
Smell you in your clothes,
Touch the things we hold dear…
But you’re gone and the only place
I can find you now is in my dear and
Painful memories of us.

I am only an echo of who we were
Bounding from the sharp edges of this life
Searching for my source, which is
The love we share even now.

How can I stay here without you?
And yet I must for there are
Others who would look for me
With the same terrible longing I suffer now.
They will suffer soon enough and need no help from me.

So I will live for now and pray for the day
When I will be again with you.

You don’t know the power compressed
In the gentle aspect of you,
The strength in a mindless gesture.
The force in a glance
The fearful energy contained in your whisper.

All I am and strive for would be lost
In the darkness of your indifference
Or shredded by a disproving look.

And if you willed it you could make me
What I should become, half a life
Made whole by the union of
Two souls who first met within
The mind of God.