Stem-Winder
We’ll join in protest around favors-spent praising
fate-cakes wherever the green apple leaves.
We’ll circle in song the meandering candlelight
vigil our voices savoring bold freedom-flavors.
We’ll stand...
The Sign
—to Seamus Heaney
It might’ve been a joke, but spoke to melike a blackbird’s cry, giddyand defiant, not knowing this placebut feeling in place,...
To Fall
My father is convinced thata World Trade Center jumper appearsin an animated movie.He claims the moment a boythrew himself off a towerwas traced...
Morning Coffee
shockingly bitter like a friend with a dirty secret
the fun of Robusta is its acridity, acidity flavor brash as a sharp-accented lemon...
From The Adirondack Chair
When young’uns (poets mostly)
say elder
They spout it
having concluded
that anyone over 39
sat a couple of rows back
from Sappho
in...
PORTRAIT OF DISAPPOINTMENT
after years of hoping things would changegiving in to "well, that's the way it is,"look me in eyes and realizethis is who...
FALLSTREETLIGHT SWITCH
The sodium-vapor streetlightswith fresnel lenses like lidded eyeshave been replacedwith horseshoe-like arcs of LED lights.As the morning stays dark longerand evening comes on...
Cloth & Sun
Chaos greets me at the door—
broken things swirl,
dust motes through worn curtains,
a breath before the next bruise.
You coil like an old cobra,
fangs...
