every night, before bed,
a simple ritual: he walks to the foyer
and drags the deacon's bench to the door
to keep intruders at bay

has been this way, since
the day he read "In Cold Blood"
and realized what uninvited guests
can do under a god's watchful eye

the belly of the bench holds every bible  
he has ever owned in his four score years
save the one by his bedside, where it sits as sentinel
against other imagined foes and woes  

though he is long deaf, those
who would defile him can yet hear, and
the righteous moan of the bench on the hardwood
would give them pause

or so the old man believes;
as if a simple sound could be so profound
to tip cosmic scales in his favor, save him
from the tyranny of evil men

this very night, before bed
he takes the same walk, shoves the same  
weighted wood against a locked door,
a simple ritual

the skulk was mostly *****

hens were haunted by either gender

the farmer's wife also feared them

though small and they ran from most two-legged beasts

the farmer shot the foxes for sport--guarding chickens not his concern with a thousand acres in corn

the farmer's son had trapped a red Reynard

it perished in captivity, starving itself

the night of the caged fox's demise, the rooster crowed tirelessly

for good reason, since the leash gobbled a dozen hens under a waning gibbous moon

the creatures prosecuted a moral symmetry it seemed

while the farmer was febrile with the grippe, the son fast asleep, and the wife dared not make a peep

witnessing a crimson carnage she likened to war

in its aftermath, a naked sun rose on waves of white feathers and scarlet trails of blood

perhaps 'tis not good to trap a wild thing, the farmer's wife mused

then she made her way to the coops, fetching enough eggs for breakfast

all the while the skulk watched from the thick brush

watched and waited, without will as we know it

but with a red reckoning ready, should they again be victims

of man's folly and sin

gone heaven's blue palette,
pocked with whiffs of white cloud,
her last day, the sky wore only winter's grey,
she a gossamer gown, soon her shroud

an ancient arterial breach had filched
her gift of speech--her hearing, too, had
yielded to the years, though her sight was still keen,
and memory’s vault stored all she had seen:

a world at war, a man on the moon,
a child born and leaving her nest, too soon  
a husband in the cold ground, she yet longing
for the sound of his voice  

now her daughter sat vigil at her side, stroking her
ethereal white hair, her plum veined hands: her touch,
her smile, the last language she would know,
completing life’s gratuitous circle  

her final thoughts returning to her child in the cradle,
a pink, round innocence, when she spoke the same to her
with a mother’s soft touch, the easy curve of her smile  
so few suns ago, it seemed, so few

it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm  

a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours

I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon

eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago

we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past

I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not

until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep

and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

seventy-five years ago today
I was napping on the deck, only the day
after I celebrated birthday number 25

they call that quick stretch from then
'til now, three-quarters of a century--though to me,
it seems not a fraction of anything

if anything is a fraction, it is I, though
now a full century on my calendar, I am but half
a man, my two legs sawed off, 12/7/41

on the flat screen in my room, I see other ancient
mariners, many proudly wheeled to the commemoration  
of that day--most with legs yet there

but what good are those parts, for war
and age leveled them, hobbled them even if they walk...
maybe I was the lucky soul

for I was sliced down to size all at once
humbled, hurt, but happy to come home, where
I made a life, with what pieces I had left

after the Sunday morning which began
with a soft singing breeze from the Pacific, and ended
with the tempests of hell, as I understand them

he replaced the washer,
the refrigerator too

he liked new appliances; they
reminded him of her

especially when he opened the freezer and found
not a pint of her Haagen-Dazs Vanilla

the new washer contained old ghosts as well
for he blasphemed her by washing on hot

a prohibition when she was still here, for fear
of shirts shrinking, she always claimed

he wondered what words of hers would haunt him
when he gutted the wall for a new oven

maybe it would just be the longing for the smell
of cookies baking  (chocolate chip)

the ones she prepared for the grandsons, the day
she took a "quick nap" and never woke up