Robin hums as she tends her garden
while birds perch all around
waiting for rustling seeds
to fill the slender columns.
Humming birds hover  
to sip sweet nectar mixed for them alone.

On concert nights her voice takes flight.
and fills the hall with her radiant soul.
On quiet mornings
graphite joins with paper
and a flower's form and meaning
are captured by her vision.

A friend fallen ill or reeling from loss
receives her gift of comfort words
and a card or meal soon follows.

Grandchildren rush to greet her
and happily fill her arms.
at night they cloak themselves
In love quilts sewn by Grandma’s hands.

If you want to learn how love abides
or long to know its fullness
follow my Robin for a day
Her gift is in the gifting.

*July, 2006

Shall we pause to consider
the shudder of a butterfly's wings
that sets the hurricane spinning
or the descent of the final raindrop
that breaches the groaning levy?

Shall we ponder the moment before
a chorus of "maybe's" morphs
into the vain eloquence of history?

Roiling in the broth of chaos
a cluster of causes startles the surface -
unfurling a queue of effects
that dot the timescape
like rows of teetering dominoes.

Typhoons twist villages to ruins,
armies rise to victory or
succumb to the despair of defeat,
or a medical miracle is born
from the agile mind of a doctor
conceived in a Chevy's back seat.

So here we stand on the ridge of time
ourselves both caused and causing,
cradling the sphere of chaos in our hands -
uncertain what effect will be our being
after all our causes are enumerated.

Time will surely tell - as soon
as we tell time exactly what to say.

*August, 2013

Jacques and Emile's veins
pounded in their skulls
as they scrambled down the ladder
and through the labyrinth of sewers
to rejoin their fellow assassins
beneath the Parisian thoroughfares.

They'd tracked the **** Captain's moves
for past a week and knew precisely
what he drank and where he ******.
They were ready when he
Stumbled down the brothel stairs.

When Jacques stepped left for a clearer shot
he found a bucket with his foot.

The German wheeled and spotted them -
raising his whistle to his mouth,
but before he had a chance to blow,
A silent report from Emile's rifle
crashed into his trachea
And he crumpled like a rag.

Back in the tunnels
Jacques bragged like a circus barker,
"You should have seen the look on
Gerry's face before we brought him down."

Emile had seen his face alright,
but thought only of the whistle
that would have doomed them all.

What do you when the world goes mad
and **** tanks roll into the Champs Élysées?
Who do you **** and why and how?

Jacques was sound asleep
and deaf to his comrades' whispers -
pondering what to do and when.

The decision came quickly and a
different sort of mission was planned
and Emile selected to execute it.

What do you do when the world goes mad?

*August, 2013

honoring the glass artistry of Dale Chihuly

A rainbow of serrated globes,
Friends to the water lilies,
Floats in a sculptured pool.

A surreal yellow glass Medusa
Woven through a white crescent trellis
Gleams in the midday sun.

Choirs of chrysanthemums
Sing with multicolored flora
Blown from molten soda, lime and sand.

Sheltered in a geodesic tropics
Orange herons stand on legs of glass
Amid living palms, bamboo and wild orchids.
Towering blue spires
Lift skyward out of the soil
While butterflies dance
In the misty veil of a waterfall.

Nature and the shimmering world within
Happily converge in the florid vision
Of an effervescent man with a patched eye -
A man called Chihuly.

October, 2006

In memoriam Asher and Franklin

Farmers flocked to Blossburg's mines
    willing their abandoned plows
    to perpetual dust and rain.

Burrowing into the Tioga hills
    with Keagle picks and sledges,
    they filled their trams with rough cut coal.

Black diamonds - carved for waiting boilers
    of New England mills and trains
    and Pennsylvania's winter stoves.

Brothers, Frank and Asher swung their picks
    in tunnels deep beneath the hills
    and brushed away the clouds of soot.

Their coughs at first seemed harmless
    enough as from nagging colds or flus -
    but deepened as their lungs turned black.

Pain and choking drove them to their beds
    where no medic's art could aid them.
    Then the coroner came to seal their eyes.

A stonecutter's chisel marks their brevity
    on an marble graveyard obelisk
    that pays no homage to their sacrifice.

September, 2007

at the fete du bons vieux temps - Cahokia, Illinois

White clouds of rosin dust
Flew off Geoff's fiddle strings
As his earth dance
Soared above the pulsing
Of friends on bass and guitar.

Tuniced men bowed
To their bonneted ladies
Bedecked in colonial frocks.
In turn each pair sashayed
Down and up the line,
Whirled and laced their way
Through outstretched hands
Of family, friends and neighbors
Shaping an arch at line's end
For all the rest to pass beneath.

All across our country's timescape
Countless bridal pairs
Have sealed their sacraments
Spinning in the whirlwind
Of the Virginia Reel -
With each interclasping of arms
A blessing upon their unions.

Geoff lifted his bow from the strings,
And bowed with his band to receive
The applause rippling the air
Like the patter of ancestral rain
Nourishing the sweet soil
Of our common earthly essence.

February, 2007

Our mystic alabaster satellite
rules the midnight sky
casting shadowy silhouettes
of all our trees and houses.

Rational tri-millennial me
chooses not to bay about it
or worship its fabled godly essence
(long since neutered by geology).

Casting aside the chains of time
I sidle up to Cenozoic me
munching on a leg of venison
staring at that improbable hanging ball
suspended in the southern heavens.

Wonder and vexation cloud his hairy face -
hunting vainly for a clue.
I whisper in a secret tongue
that only he and I can comprehend,
"You may not get it yet, grandpa
but soon enough you will."