poem

 Yellow

What we understand as yellow

Varies from person to person.

It’s all a matter of perception.

My yellow isn’t necessarily yours 

Even if we use the same word. 

Light from Wordsworth’s daffodils

Has to travel through clouded cataracts,

Sometimes, and splash up against

Flickering arrays of aging rods

And cones in the back of the retina.

From there it gets shunted down 

A slowly demyelinating optic nerve to a place 

In the brain that generates a sad version

Of the color we know as yellow.

The edges of it can seem

Orange or green

To the practiced eye

But I still know what you mean.

Love is like this too

Only on a much wider spectrum

And the journey it takes to get 

To the raw garden where it grows 

Is far more perilous.

Rare is the love that arrives uninjured.

Sometimes barely enough gets through

And when you waste it 

The world gets dipped in its dye.

Sometimes it arrives so damaged 

You don't even recognize it—

Slam the door in its face. Never get to meet it.

Too much, if you’re not used to it,

Comes as a flash of blinding light

And all you can think about

Is how to see it without ever looking at it.

But it’s all shades of the same color 

Regardless of how much gets filtered.

That’s the only guarantee here—

At least a little bit always find a way through.

You take it as it comes, like any gifted thing: 

Sometimes it shines as joy

Sometimes you start to cry.

Sometimes you sing.

It all depends on

Your angle of illumination.

Sometimes flowers 

Are the color of cowards

And sometimes 

A harbinger of spring.

5/1/25

poem

 Middle

In the middle of the night

I had a nightmare set in the des

-iccated middle of the day

and I was surrounded by children

and I was a child myself

and we were all very afraid 

of the hot red noon

bearing down on us 

and forgot about the night

and the darkness to come 

when none of us

were ever allowed to see the moon.

At the end of my life

I recalled a moment from

the beginning of my life

when I had wandered away

from distracted adults

on a balmy summer day

and just kept following a path.

Sidewalks erupted in thrust faults

of adventurous texture

as archways of trees shielded me

from the terror or limitless sky.

The old lady who invited me 

inside for cookies and milk

called the police

and my uncle came 

and took me home 

in the back of his cruiser

with the lights flashing

like a dangerous criminal.

In the middle of my life 

I imagined the end of my life

chasing after the little boy

of the beginning, shouting his name

but the kid never looked back,

his little legs churning so fast.

No surprise, the end of my life

was tenacious and single minded—

It just kept coming and coming

as the boy grew bored and started to slack off.

He never turned around, not once,

even when the pursuer was close

enough to cast him in shadow

for the rest of his life.

At the beginning of my life

I imagined a middle and an end

of a tale which could be read 

either forwards or backwards

and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference

but if you opened to a page randomly

and just started reading,

the sense of sequence 

deliquesces to irrelevance

as all the boys I’ve been 

gather round to listen

to whatever happens next

5/1/25

poem

 Gap

We all go to our graves 

With a certainty deficit,

A gap between what we hope

For and what we know.

This hole is best filled by

Love, of course, but when 

We go to retrieve it 

As doubt demands it

We find the lacuna empty.

Where is it? Where did it go?

Did you forget already?

We’ve given it all away, silly,

To everyone we love

So they will have it

When they face their own

Days of doubt.

The only certainty

Is the love we leave behind,

Poured into a hole

With a hole in the bottom of it

5/1/25

poem

 Crossroad

This is the crossroads with no signs 

And no directional indicators.

To further complicate matters

You aren’t sure where you started

Or where you’re supposed to go.

You’re just in the middle,

Crucified on a cross

Of someone’s else’s roads

Radiating out into the distance.

There may be other routes you can’t see

Overgrown with grass and weeds

Perhaps this is only the center point

Of an asterisk of infinite possible paths

Referring you to the bottom 

Of the page for additional context

5/1/25

poem

 Birthday

In the old days when the earth was flat

You could only walk so far until

You fell off the ledge

But that never happened.

If you ever got too close

The gods would strike 

You down with a thunderbolt

And turn you into a goat.

We used to follow a lunar calendar.

My birthday was always two weeks after

The first half moon of the vernal equinox

But as time went on it got

Too complicated to remember.

People lost their literacy of the skies

Even I forgot I was still alive

So now anytime there’s a sunny day in April

I whisper my wish to the wind

And wait for the dogwoods to flash pink and white

Like thousands of candles on a cake

5/1/25