poem

Primogeniture

My dad was never around 

So my son has to see me

Every single day

My dad was indifferent 

To my success or failure

So long as he was the hero 

Of however the story turned out.

I just want to be my son’s

Powerless wizard warning

Him to pay attention 

To all the hidden trapdoors 

I’d once fallen through.

Formerly a self-proclaimed white knight

My dad is now like any other castled king

Alone on his throne, back to the wall

Anxiously waiting for the coup

He keeps seeing in dreams 

Play out in his Great Hall. 

I’ve never been interested in kingdoms—

I only want my boy

To be better than me

He’s mad right now, though

Says he likes the feeling of falling

But I reach to catch him anyway.

My only spell is an overcompensation 

That takes years to slough

From the next generation.

8/16/26

poem

 Likeness

He used to be used to me 

But every time I see him

Now the look on his face

Betrays a stifled reckoning.

It stares back at me 

In shocked horror

As if I were an ancient monster

Emerging from the glassy pond,

The one the whispering silences

Had always warned him about.

I try to hold his gaze

Hoping he will see me 

As I’ve always been 

And slowly start to soften 

Back into the over-confident boy 

Who thought he saw a man.

8/16/26

poem

 Hydrangea

After the summer rain 

The world softens

To a gauzy pink cotton 

Of groggy saturation.

Water drips from eaves

Metronomically preserving 

An illusion of duration 

While time enjoys

Its brief leave of absence.

A lone bat flutters away

Like an epileptic X 

Against the pastel sky

In strange repeatable patterns. 

I had only meant 

To take out the trash.

No one prepared me for this. 

A leaf of the white hydrangea

Collapses under the weight 

Of its aliquot of summer precipitation

And then springs back up.

8/16/26

poem

 Endless Song

This is my favorite song

Once it found the right rhythm

It seemed it would never end 

Odd melodies looping 

Unceasingly without sounding stale 

No matter how many times I hear them

Your bare shoulders play piano sonatas

Outside under sturgeon summer moons

Your laughter’s a bridge to drastic themes

I’d otherwise never bother to see 

While your eyes are shiny blue bars

Tapped at the small end of the xylophone

And those legs of yours are the outro

That takes us back to the beginning again

Our song must also be sung

So we keep coming up

With unexpected new lyrics.

We take turns.

Every day together

Is the gamete of another 

Verse that fits the prosody.

We sing them in any order

And in between it’s always fun

To belt out the old chorus

We know by heart, the one 

We first fell in love to.

That’s the one I’ll be humming

Softly in your ear

Toward the end of the night

When we’re the last ones left

And the lights come on 

And the band goes home

Softly in your ear

The last remnants of a music

We'll no longer be able to dance to.

8/16/26

poem

 Helium's Comet

1

The day you turned two you let go

Of your giant helium birthday balloon

Just because you liked 

To watch it dart and flutter.

But it had a mind of its own,

Flittering just beyond your grasp

And then up, slaloming gnarled 

Limbs of the old oak tree

At the house where you first lived,

Then breaking free into the deep blue

And higher and higher

As if scampering home 

To live amongst wispy white clouds.

You stretched your little fingers

As high as you could 

And you cried and cried 

And all I could do

Was crouch to hold you 

And whisper of the wispy clouds 

As we watched it vanish 

In the haze of vastness

That dissolves even the stars

2

15 years flashes by like Tucson lightning 

Briefly fracturing the hooded 

Monsoon-season evening sky.

Something changes when it happens

That no one has ever defined

And all that’s left is the faint whiff

Of ozone burning

And the rapidly fading residue

Of all the intricate patterns

We’ve forever left behind 

3

I’m in clinic again, an old patient

I haven’t seen in years

Regaling me with tales 

Of counterfeit coupons and broken faucets

When I suddenly see it drifting by in the window

Over the old woman’s shoulder—

A golden #2 balloon!

Similar to the one we lost so long ago

When you were my baby girl

And I was a lot less gray.

All I wanted to do was call you,

To tell you I saw it, so many years

Since we had both stopped looking.

There it was, appearing like a comet

Making its incalculable cosmic rounds,

Still, after all this time 

Just beyond my reach 

4

Well, that’s the way it goes, honey.

I’m afraid we’ll never catch it.

Some things you only get to hold once

And then they're gone. 

Maybe not now, but someday

When thunder clears its throat from distance  

You’ll search the skies

And see it for yourself

8/16/26

poem

 Recurring Nightmare

Some people have recurring nightmares 

Where they can’t stop falling

Others are haunted by dreams 

Of spiders or swarms of bee stings.

Mine is me crawling on all fours

Deep into a cave cut into the side

Of a craggy old mountain.

There is a steady downward slant

And the passage gets narrower and narrower. 

I’m wearing a lighted helmet that shows me

Exactly where I’m going but I keep going

Anyway. The walls are a spiral stairway

Zeroing in on one-dimensionality

While the ceiling and floor slowly succumb

To a long denied mutual physical attraction.

It gets harder and harder to move.

I can't turn around.

It ends with a sharp decline 

I slide down until I’m caught

In the cold embrace of stone

Carved to accept every angle 

And curve of my now trapped body.

In the dream I’m smiling, lips flush

Against their perfectly arched space.  

It’s only during waking life,

Seeing how happy I seemed,

That it starts to feel so terrifying.

7/31/26

poem

 Gossip

1.

When it’s all over

It’s either a total silence

That swallows time 

Or you hear muffled voices 

On the other side 

Of a closed door

And no matter how hard

You press your ear

Against the cold steel

You can’t make out a word.

2.

Hell is knowing

They’re probably 

Talking about you

3.

Heaven is understanding

Language is a wave

Washing over edges

Of massive continents 

Of silent meaning.

Eventually there’s nothing left

But a gray wet sand 

Extending sideways in both directions

As far the universe is long. 

4.

To the left are footprints

Emerging from the sea.

To the right is nothing

But smooth sand

Patiently waiting

To be disturbed.

7/31/26

poem

 Joe Black

In the movie Meet Joe Black

Death, as played by Brad Pitt,

Falls in love with the daughter

Of the older man he came to fetch.

It isn’t as ridiculous as it seems.

Life is always pretending to be 

Someone new every single day.

My clinic, in fact, was full of the living

And there were a few moments—

Old Mrs. Liebling’s comfort dog

Putting his paw on my knee

While I rubbed his scruff—

When life became me.

7/26/26

poem

 Button

There’s a button for everything.

Push it and something happens.

Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not.

If you like it, you keep pushing it.

You can push it too much, though.

One day nothing happens.

Someone says, check the batteries

But that’s the first thing you did.

They were fine,

But you changed them anyway.

You just want to change the channel,

Put something else on,

Turn up the volume.

You get to a point where

All you want is to be able

To turn it on and off.

On

Off

On 

Off

Push the button

7/26/26

poem

 On Call

Squirrels dart skittishly

Across the back lawn

Like surgical interns 

My grass is a cancer

Stealing vertical spaces.

It keeps growing and growing

Wasps and yellow jackets swoop

Like suture needles sewing

Quilts of marigolds

The rain is excisional debridement

Washing away the dusty remains

Of another wasted afternoon.

The children on the swing set

Are also patients.

Soon I’ll have to make rounds.

The woman sitting in the kitchen 

Had an appointment an hour ago.

She waits patiently.

7/26/26