Alone, timeworn—but still
standing, even if its paint-scuffed radiators
give no heat and its window frames
leak and its doors don’t
shut tight, everything foundering
since its elder kee […]

“I was most grievously undone
when I lost my footing on the shelf
and swan dived to the floor
splayed and back broken”,
says the complete works of Shakespeare
who now leans against the cash reg […]

Building rituals out of nothingness,
I’m sitting on a park bench, reading
Wallace Stevens on a sunny day
when the flashing shadow of a crow
darkens my library book.
Perfect, I think.
Where are the t […]

Christmas Eve Parable
Phoebe, my five-year-old granddaughter adores the tiny
wax Jesus who lies in the cradle of the creche that came
down to us from now dead great grandparents. Wise men,
Mary and Joseph, two […]

CHOPIN’S HEART
A brief apocalypse has taken possession of my person.
The streets are full of melancholy.

Yesterday I fell asleep on the bus.
The sound of someone crying woke me.

Was it the woman slumped i […]

after Marie Howe
It doesn’t matter that the sugar maple is leaning
closer to the house, that the cluster of seeds
I planted yesterday will wash away.

Something doesn’t add up.
The dishwasher sti […]

At university, I lived on A Cappella Lane, which dead-ended at the railroad tracks. Elm cool, the house had ivy as a front ‘lawn’ chaperoned by a short picket fence. The landlady had a walk-in basement apa […]

A STUDY IN RED AND WHITE

Perhaps a poinsettia-shaped arrow,
aimed perfectly by the mischievous son of Venus,
brought pomegranate seed mayhem
to this soul of mine.
A red velvet cake secret
snowballed […]

In this time of social distancing, I have opened the box as Pandora must have done; 1500 pieces dumped like a pestilence onto the table, but like school children, all begging to know their place. During […]

In the Catacombs

Ice hangs from the glass lantern,
its dive caught midstream.
It is patience itself,
suspended in immense
loneliness.

Inside
the fire flickers
like a sunset descending
behind the […]

69 Killed on Eastern Jet in a Crash near Charlotte
New York Times,September 12, 1974

Like Odysseus, you sail the ocean in howling winds.
No arm chair academic in corduroys,
you are my […]

Low clouds and the slate-
colored river glimpsed
through the trees, the train
jolts into the day.
A day like this compresses
your thoughts into scraps, I said.
One day’s like any other,
they f […]

The Pines

Behind Snow Drive,
rusty needles led to a pine grove,
where we made little circles
with dirty rocks
and lit little fires
with matches lifted
from the corner store.
These days the pines
that […]

“I change, but cannot die.” Shelly “The Cloud”

As my wife and I are on our morning walk, I often comment on the clouds above: the constant change they float themselves through, the subtlety of hues they dr […]

While I waited there
in the terminal at Newark,
I spotted something
out of the corner of my eye.
It was a bird flying back
and forth along the ceiling,
and because I was
in an airline […]

Peace Offering
I still don’t know what to do
with the jacket hanging in my
closet. It’s not that old but like
a Brautigan novel is out of fashion.
Maybe it all comes down to math
and how for the first tim […]

—for Nicole Marie

She asked me to stand by her side,
But I wanted to see it all
Because I knew that I’d forget—
Even as hard as I’d want to remember—
The brunt and the bitter
Forcing my son in […]

Once the Thunder Stops

and it’s safe to venture out, we walk
to the end of the drive, out to the road,
through the mire & torn branches.
The smell of our wood fire mingles

with eucalyptus. We have only t […]

Mountain spruce
on upward slopes:
their pale under-blue
unwraps the clouds
in their slow round
of visiting.
We taste tracery
of strange soaps
on our skins. You
turn towards me,
awake […]