They sit straight in a row, like jackdaws on a line;
three women, garbed  in black, on uncomfortable metal  chairs.
They speak in low murmuring voices.
Their eyes are fixed upon the burnished Bronze casket
at the front of the chapel.
The casket that contains
All that remains
of the cancer riddled ruin of a man.
Their eyes are downcast, their ankles tightly crossed.
They have come to console their sister for her loss.
She is one of them now; she has joined in their number.
Indifferent wives make excellent widows.

The weather is perfect for flying today;
seventy degrees, hardly a cloud in the sky.
I stowed my carry-on in the overhead bin.
I am glad our 747 is only half full,
perhaps I will be able to sleep on the plane.
I am due in Rome tomorrow .
There is a growing problem in our parishes and schools.
Men of the cloth engaged in unspeakable acts.
The Curia must be alerted.
The diocese has turned a blind eye to these problem priests
Moving them from parish to parish
Ignoring the harm they perpetrate against the innocents.
I will not be silent.
I watch a young family take their seats in the row across from mine.
I hope the baby is not going to cry all the way across the Ocean.
The smiling Blonde stewardess begins our preflight safety check:
“Welcome to Trans World Airlines Flight 800 to Rome via Paris”

Some time ago, I planted a sapling,
a non-fruiting pear tree,
in the back garden of my home.
I planted it to take the place
Of an older tree lost in a storm.
I have watched it wax
As I have waned.
I know someday it will give its shade
To others of my kind
Who are to me unknown.

From their farms and their villages, they answered the call;
of King and of Country, to the great game of war.
They drilled and they practiced to work as a team,
then were shipped to the Somme, July, Nineteen sixteen.

A film of their training was made to be shown
to their sisters and mothers and lovers back home.
It was screened one time only, to standing acclaim,
for the unwitting widows who carried their names.

Like ripe wheat at the harvest felled by the scythe,
the chums led the assault and half paid with their life.
Lincolnshire wept when the casualties were read.
That first day at the Somme saw twenty Thousand dead.

Those that returned to their village or farm
Thereafter oft woke from their sleep in alarm.
They were changed men and broken, who returned from the fray,
and who bore their survivor guilt to their own dying day.

It might have been beautiful, and certainly smart
Born with your academics and my poet’s heart.
It might have been witty, pithy and wise;
possessing your nose and my two emerald eyes.

It might have been evil; it may have proved kind;
the first of our brood was the last of our line.
Not that we ever will know, I suppose.
Just idle questions  geneticists might pose

It would have been born with ten fingers and toes
If left, unimpeded, for nine months to grow.
We were both too young, both too unprepared,
This life, unintended, was not to be spared.

Forty winters have passed since that fateful decision.
It was swept from our path with a clinic’s precision.
Now you, too, are gone, and that leaves only me
To mourn for our child not permitted to be.

In Orlando, there’s an emptiness words struggle to convey
As survivors try to comprehend what happened yesterday.
When the music and the laughter stopped, then fear and screams began.
The children of the city died at the hands of a madman.
Sons and Daughters, brothers, sisters; fifty dead in the attack
There is sadness in the City as the rainbows fade to black.


How beautiful that night had been; the dance floor pulsed with life.
Here were youth and beauty on display; not bitterness or strife.
At the bar with cash in hand they drank craft brews on tap.
It was last call for one and all, the D.J. played a Rap
Then sadness in the city as the rainbows fade to black.

Some blame the gun, some blame a Faith, some bluster; others hide.
In Orlando a grey mood prevails where sons and daughters died.
By dawn the sirens stopped their song, but there is no turning back
There is sadness in our Country as the rainbows fade to black.

Look at you in your best blue suit.
Look at you in your power tie.
They’ve given us this last moment all alone,
a final chance to say goodbye.
When last we spoke I had no time.
I was busy on the phone.
I hurried you off to your bed
Where, as Fate had it, you died alone.
You were kind of heart and wise.
I am the child of your old age.
I chide myself for being brusque
just as you exited the stage.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,
one of omission on my part.
Death has stolen the warmth of Love away
And left you with a cold clay heart.