Overjoyed to catch a glimpse of you
across the hotel lobby,
my footfalls quickened,
eager to head you off
before you slipped from view.

The elevator chimed
I tugged your sleeve.
as you stepped inside the lift
then blanched in disbelief
as you turned and we each met
the eyes of a total stranger.

I muttered most rueful sorrys.
You smiled amused forgiveness
as the doors between us sealed
and you vanished to a
destiny beyond my choice to know.

for Robert Chamberlin

Rocking silently
In a dark anechoic cell,
orphaned to my senses,
my plumbing plays *continuo
to my neurons' treble aire.

Seigneur, please-
don’t **** the air away
or deny to me my plate.
Some dabs of water please
for my arid tongue
lest dessicated tubes
and muted synapses
score my pounding drum
to everlasting silence.

*November,  2007

The phone rang after 2: 00 am.
Taking the steps in pairs
my legs faltered at his door -
paralyzed by denial.

Forcing myself inside,
I saw father's lifeless frame,
wired to synthetic everything -
a cold white line
still against the black.

My grief-racked soul
railed at that liar screen,
knowing his true lifeline
danced with passion  -
precision cutting with his lathe,
strumming passing chords
on his Gibson Les Paul.

That morning I knocked a ball
through a neighbor’s glass
I learned what honor meant.
With dad's steady hand
on my  shoulder,
I stammered  apologies
and learned to glaze a window.  

We'd play catch after supper.
or down franks and pop
at Briggs where the Tigers played.
Detroit is flying high this year:
God, how I wish
I could give the old man a call.

*September,  2006

You can find Ockham's wisdom
displayed on the web
inscribed with ones and zeros.

So like everything else
in this time jostled world
Ockham's razor has gone electric.

*December, 2007

Poetry just might be love
     or just so the other way around.

I tell you,my dear
a day never passes without,
     (well hardly a day)
without a thought or two of
you and you and you,

bound as we are
      by blood,
              by tears,
       by laughter
or some common dream or enterprise.

You sing in my poems
       and my neurons fire for you.

Either I love you because I cannot forget you
       or the other way around.

So, my love, I offer you this poem.
      (So, my poem, I offer you this love).

*December, 2015

Earth (Pangaea)

Pangaea heaved and shifted
beneath the fire-storm sky.
Colliding plates and spewing mountains
shook, roared and thundered
under the brutal chaos
of torrential cataclysms.

In time she yielded her ire
to millennia of pacific rains -
her severed crust
set adrift across the oceans
like gigantic earthen rafts.

Jungles sprang up and terrible lizards
came, grazed and left their bones.
Forests, grains and multifarious beasts
grew and perished in accord
with their past and future destinies.

So here we are - earthbound,
tossed from our mothers' wombs -
fated to live and breed
by the grace of miracles
far beyond our ken.

Beloved mother Gaia,
from whose dust we are raised,
nurture and sustain us
and sing us to our mortal sleep.

2. Air

Air - earth's miracle brew of
     oxygen, nitrogen and all the rest
          meted out in perfect harmony.

Air - silent and still on a moonlit night -
     driver of sheeted rain on window panes -
          and winds that shake the trembling aspens.

Air - author of land and ocean squalls -
     bringer of that ominous pallor
          that presages a tornado's furor

Air - invisible aerial highway
     for majestic eagles and turbo-jets -
         medium of rhetoric and symphonies.

Air – window to the cosmos
      and our fragile life–giving broth -
          unwitting conveyer of toxic alchemy.

Keep watch my sisters and brothers:
     the air we breathe is what we make it
          or rather what we let it be.

3. Water

Water like a capricious deity
     wanders through time and topography -
     cherished and cursed for
     what it gives and what it takes away.

Gentle rains and strident gales
     sculpt rivers and streams
     through forests and plains
     bound for union with the open sea.

Diurnal tides ebb and wane
     at the whim of the charismatic moon.
     Ice mountains advance and retreat;
     rock-strewns moraines left in their wake.

Turbulent currents
     soar over jagged cataracts,
     spraying pastel prisms
     across the misted valleys.

Beneath our all too fragile skins,
     secret sanguine rivers navigate
     our veins and arteries
     bathing organs, limbs and sensors
     with curative balm and sustenance.

Wellspring of all elements,
     fill our daily ladles
     and grant us the will and empathy
     to bequeath the same to our progeny.

4. Fire

Two hundred million years ago
our Paleolithic cousins
seized branches from a burning forest
and stepped into a bold new world.

By the glow of fire-lit caves,
and the scent of searing venison,
they gathered wits and tools
to craft shelters and weaponry.

Their children's children would design
forges and furnaces, factories
and build engines that run on fire.

But their anxious siblings in despair
snatched lightning from the sky
and twisted by fits of anger pride
made also muskets, missiles, bombs
and nuclear Armageddons.

Loki, god of nobler flames
open our blood-stained eyes
and show us the means
to stay our arson lust and
abide by the light of reason.

*Revised and integrated version, December, 2015

Standing in the tunnel
at Eighth and Pine station,
I survey westbound commuters
waiting across the tracks  -
standing arms akimbo
or leaning on marble walls.
A well-suited young man paces the platform -
cell phone pressed to his cheek.

    [Passengers stand clear of the
    edge of the platform at all times]

Rushing in from the east,
a gleaming white chariot
arrives - pauses - resumes
leaving the far platform vacated
as if by alien abduction

From the left a blazing light
pierces the  tunnel
and the Shiloh – Scott eastbound
halts and snaps open its doors.
crossing the threshold.,
I claim a seat by the aisle.

    [Please stand clear! Doors are closing]

With eyes half shut I scan the crowd:
uniformed workers wearing ID's,  
a toddler’s arms and legs
dangling off his mother's lap,
An elderly couple talking softly.

The soft clatter of wheels
and the gentle side-to-side sway
rocks us like a cradle -
memories of the long day
melting into thoughts of home.

    [Fairview Heights Station.
    Doors open to my right]

The lady with the toddler steps off.
A trio of teenage girls
fresh from the mall
seek and find empty seats -
filling the rear of the car
with the music of their chatter.

Streetlamps scatter shadows
over parking lots.
The unseen country side
slips by under cover of darkness.
Headlights gleam like jewels
waiting for crossing gates to lift

    [Next stop Belleville Station
    Doors open to my left]

I clutch my lap top,
work my way to the door
and wait for the train’s full stop

Stepping out into the frost filled air
I pause to watch the sleak white chariot
vanish on the eastern horizon.

September,  2006