poem

 Anger Stone

The counselor assigned my son

The task of drawing what he was

Feeling on a rounded gray stone

My boy filled it with indecipherable

Orange etchings like an ancient Aztec relic

I tried to translate his glyphs

Into a rune that unlocked

The loving gentleness of his heart

I held it to my ear like a shell

And could hear the ghostly 

Groans of my stern thwarted grandpa

It smelled like the emptiness

Of my dad’s old closet 

I placed it against the tip of my tongue

Only to taste hints of the hard

Feast that could be the rest of my life 

I held it close before my eyes

Hoping to find the faint outline

Of the shape my son will 

Someday sculpt it into, 

As soon as he learns to cut

I’d do anything to help him

But all my strongest teeth

Have already been cracked  

9/27/22

poem

Next

This is a love story.

If the flower doesn’t turn to the sun

Then how do you know it’s a flower?

When the liquid doesn’t freeze at zero degrees

You’ve mistaken the ocean for fresh water.

That time your shoes wouldn't lace up anymore

Was because you were standing still in slippers.

When your dog stops barking when someone's at the door

You're comforted by a cat purring in your lap.

Everything is just happening.

Life is action,

One event after the next,

Even when it seems like nothing is moving

Like this clenched fist on a hypersonic jet.

If my boy can’t chase that puck

If my girl isn’t allowed to be kind

If I can’t finish this unrhymed line

If I can’t go on loving you

Then what am I?

Who have I become next?

11/30/20

poem

Bisection

I watched a deer dart between 
Southbound and northbound traffic
On the weekday drive home.
The cars squealed their wheels,
Veered sharp right and churned
Up clouds of gray dust

From the graveled berm.

The deer went bounding white-tailed
Through the long brown grass
And never once looked back.

11/3/20

poem

Poem #16

Poems are like old pictures
We used to leaf through as kids.
A way to make forgotten details

Of a life come rushing back:

Mom and Dad so young,

That lumpy pumpkin costume.

Birthdays, anniversaries, of course.

But even the mundane trifles warrant capture.

The best pictures are the ones taken 

For no discernible reason at all,

A whimsical forgetfulness

Of the notion a future might exist.

I remember the way I felt, exactly,

When you smiled on the plane,

That purple dress you once wore,

The time I snapped one

Of you, deep in introspection,

When you thought no one was looking.

What’s captured isn't the image,

Only the fleeting way I felt then.

Like this poem is just words

Trying ever so hard, someday soon,

To remind me of your skin,

Of the sadness I felt

While sitting alone on the porch

That resplendent fall afternoon

Scrolling through pictures of us.

10/25/20