--WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT ME, WE’RE WONDERING ABOUT YOU

 

…I’m home from Portland, feeling a little wrecked, having left a fair amount of brain cells there, but it was quite fun.  I laughed a lot, a couple of times I laughed so hard I cried.

And it was my birthday, yesterday, a casual affair, which is just fine by me.

…The Guide to Kultur Creative Journal came in my mail why I was gone.  It’s a strong literary magazine.

I have the first poem below in it on page 90:
 

One Great Love

The man across the lake

Is building a fire
With the legs of a dining room table
And a host of patterned blouses
Through binoculars I can see that he looks
Neither satisfied or sad
Wearing a workman’s placid face
He could be mixing cement
Or baking an omelet
I saw them at the store once
Kissing in the condiment aisle
Giggling and not caring that I noticed
Now the skirts go in, next the shoes
So many shoes
Stilettos and flats and animal print boots
All catching flame
I don’t know what most people would do
Have a garage sale or donate to Goodwill
I don’t know how a heart goes on
When it’s lost its one great love

 

The Never-ending Now

I suppose you are thinking this

would be a good time to blame the moon
or raise a glass
slice a finger
make confessions
do anything but live
here in the never-ending now
but there is a flock of starlings
writing names in the aquamarine
a baby smelling of homemade bread
cooing and pawing air
some girl somewhere is getting her first kiss
from a boy she’s been writing poems about
a mother has kicked cancer’s ass
refugees have found a home
Nina Simone is crooning on a phonograph
in an old folks home while a couple dances
please stop and ask yourself if
you really want to miss so much beauty

 

Searching For My Daughter

I am looking for you in the fog

Which slides across the lake
Like the white breath of a misguided dragon
I am groping and flailing
Calling your name
Walking across water
Slipping on ice
Fighting an unsteady current
As gravity tries to take me further
From this spot to that
But I won’t let it
I’m here
Searching for you
Looking in every copse
And barren field
Waiting for the mist to clear
For the sun to lift her tanned arms
Yawn or yell
And point me safely to you

 

Home

Today I am grateful for the fallow fields

Where as a child I’d fly kites
Imagining them angels sent to save me
From my war room home
The wind was a good friend then
Soil smelling of chaff and barley
The ghosts at bay for once
Returning here after all these years
Feels a bit like victory
Or forgiveness
And when my wife asks why I’m smiling
I tell her I’m ready to go home

 

Wonder Woman

You are running out of people to save

Even the mailman is looking healthy
Yesterday it was a nun with a sprained ankle
The day before your grandpa Lester’s wounded heart
Once yourself from choking on a chicken bone
If I knew how to sew I would make you a cape
I suppose they have super hero costumes at the store
But really the point is it’s time to stop let go
Be whoever you really are
We’ve been married twenty years now
And I still haven’t figured that out