sick day

Across the street small men in brightly colored hats
put finishing touches on a block of modern flats

too costly for a move, too drab, too pointedly
brand new to be moved into anyway, the free

espresso for potential future tenants not
withstanding. Absentee developers have caught

themselves in their own snare of advertising: Close
To Everything—just not quite something on its own.

But young urban professionals will bring enough
of their own character to bear, will pile stuff

against thin particle board walls to insulate
their quiet lives from neighbors and the clubhouse, race

to call the elevator for themselves alone,
that this five-story glass and sheer fascade will show

itself not flat and lifeless, not a concrete pall,
but suitable for any kind of life at all.

17 July 2025 poem

howard carter discovers cup noodles

When first we broke the seal
a dry wind scattered dust
out & from the makeshift
opening we had made
carried but a hint of
riches beyond measure

howard carter discovers femininity

Why do the breasts of this
figurine swell so when
being made of stone
they are utterly with
out feeling cold & not
in the slightest useful

howard carter discovers downton abbey

What an exceptional
specimen New Kingdom
To be sure a costly
facsimile & yet
that vase does capture the
spirit of the ancients

howard carter discovers true love

I would shift the sands of
this whole Valley for a
place beside you I would
clasp you like a scarab
amulet to my heart
& never stop digging

2 July 2025 poem

tardigrade in space

Is this all
there is? Small
claw-fingered

arms and no
thing to grab
onto? In

another
life I trod
water

unseeing
all the day
in a pond

I endured
I was one
of many

Now I look
out onto
the stars

30 June 2025 poem

soliders & sailors

I.
As propaganda not less useful for
Arriving straight from central casting more
Than fifteen reconciled years too late

As for its placement one block south of “that’s
Too far to walk, let’s go and eat,” one passes
Solitary, numbed in winter, plain

Exhausted in the summer, by the tall
Senescent landlocked stone memorial
To Soliders and to Sailors of this State,

Which not quite meeting roughly drilled-out eye
To eye refuses confrontation, sighs,
And looks to urbanine sophisticates

To say, as any soldier ought to know,
You mustn’t hold your Love out like a Rose.

II.
Too like the sailor with his manly grip
Upon the rigging of an absent ship,
The overardent Lover risks his footing

And the self respect that comes of all
Promotions: might maintain his pride, stand tall,
But only in imagination looks

Himself to his superiors. Without
A cool detached reserve to hand to rouse
One’s interest, he plays it by the book

As long as he can stomach it. He makes
His hammock, lies in it, and then he begs
For recognition. He denies he took

For granted fashions were no more than clothes
And wore his tribulation like a Rose.

III.
But I was never asked to die for Love
Protests the cantering thick-bearded rough
Rider. You have my indignation — why

Should that be insufficient? It was more
Than surfeit to you in a time of war.
A gentleman when bested only finds

The patience to acknowledge it the once,
And then to rein in possible affronts
To come he buys a horse one hand higher

Than what he had before. I bought and burned
My sacrifice, gave you a chance to earn
Your Love and save it in the charge: a price

Too like the wild stallion I suppose,
Who cannot help but trample on a Rose.

IV.
The Lover carries like a cannon shot
Reverberating on the bluff, and hot
Upon the ear of bystanders appeals

To natural law for his excesses. War
Is not the province of the weak of course,
So he has never felt the touch of fear

Nor ever been waylaid by patient doubt
Which waits beside the lesser-travelled routes,
No: not this far behind the line, concealed

From knowledge of the enemy or thought
Of anything beside his tent, his cot,
His mortar’s trigonometry revealed

In subtle arcs and sudden lights opposed;
A distant scent, a charred, a burning Rose.

7 May 2025 poem

laurence

A gilded tree in flower or a rose
bush gnarls upward far beyond in height
in girth in execution any posed
and underpaid life model toward the high
glazed skylight in the corner of the room.
Constructed of a living wood, hand carved,
dark polished, like the living it assumes
the sun life giving still, and bears the hard
grained scars of its invention underneath
gold filigree. It is intended to
be set straight on against the wall and seen
for what it holds: its branches by a rude
and obvious art supporting coals that writhe
St. Laurence of Rome upon his pale gridiron.

8 February 2025 poem

Gathering their rope
and tackle two men
speaking Spanish lift
themselves to point out
gaps between red bricks

16 August 2024 poem

the ascension

Your bald head upturned
to Him all the Lord
sees presumably
is one more dull face
made bright with worry

and the acclaim of
heaven. Miracles
you have seen before
but do not hold a
candle to your man

gathering His robes
up modestly &
stepping into thin
mountain air. Ever
the perfet showman

His humor settles
down before the glow
of satisfaction
showing in His face
& does not reach the

eyes serene & blue
by which He sees just
hanging there a small
red flame like faith
flickering still.

13 August 2024 poem

See how despite discouragement the rose,
Just like the tender, tended heart, still grows.

17 July 2024 poem

waiting for the eclipse

April 8, 2024

The birds descended as they always had
except the young birds did not want to go
to bed, and said we want to see the sky
turn blue before its time and watch while sun–
spots gather in the eyes of foolish men

We want to shiver in the afternoon
without a reason beyond wanting to,
the thought for half an hour that the world
is different, dimmer at the edges as
it sometimes is, and knowing when to look

15 July 2024 poem

the paper wars

were lost before
the thought of what
it meant to win

had settled on
the land like dust.

The paper wars
regarded then
were cold and thin

and garlanded
the world around

with simple chains
which were not yet
unbreakable.

8 April 2024 poem

constantine

A vision of a vision came to me
As shadow from an upper window caught
In folds of gold embroidered drapery

Is thrown back on itself: a feeling not
Unlike the sudden subtle certainty
On waking of a dream’s receding thought

23 March 2024 poem

marble mattress

The upholstery is everything
that one could pay for. Above all
it is revealing — of his cheek,
his neck, his breast. His other thing.

The Grecians, as the Cardinal
will tell you, were less rigid in
their definitions. Every tall
and pale unshaven man was called

a Gaul. Desire was no sin
but a compliment paid by the gods
to those whose services pleased them,
and to their relatives. For him

to not admire this well wrought
embodiment of pleasant youth
asleep and confident, to not
so flatter beauty, would be wrong.

Would not, if I may tell the truth,
pay near so well as has this large
stone cushion which (it is best viewed
at a distance) has become a new

attraction in itself. There are
no sculptures that requite one’s touch.
But some, like mine, like him, are carved
deceivingly: though cold and hard

beneath the human hand and much
too still to be supposed alive,
they look more real than God. Near such
one feels that one is being watched

by sleeping marble lidded eyes,
whatever other men might think,
that if awoken in the night
would see us in a better light.

13 March 2024 poem

teresa

A little privacy?
I cannot concentrate
on God with you watching

me. And obviously
I will write down later
all the interesting

details so young ladies
who wish to imitate
my example and see
the Lord God face-to-face
may do so properly

by work and poverty
obediance patience
and a well-becoming

unselfish chastity.
O this? You see I take
not one single earthly

pleasure from this, only
I enjoy the greatest
religious ecstacy,
for which you must behave
better than you believe

2 March 2024 poem

david

I have seen that look before.
At the writing-table, and
in bed. After hours of
practice. When I ask you why
you are angry and you say
that you aren’t, only just
trying to concentrate on —

On something. Once, you gathered
a newborn lamb in your arms
and quieted it with a
glance. Looked up, bit your lip to
look fierce and said, now I will
be serious enough for
the both of us, never fear.

28 February 2024 poem

daniel

What more could Daniel ask you for?
Bernini stretches him in prayer
While in the alcove just behind
Him, tame, the lion licks his heel.

26 February 2024 poem

grace

Giant loaf of Irish soda bread
On a heavy platter, bless these hands
Passing you around the table. Let

Us not falter before we have had
Our desert: a taste that is of sweet
Plenty overpouring fullness that

Fills the empty glasses of our need.
Here, you say, there always will be more
Than enough left over. Take and eat.

23 February 2024 poem

big bronze baldachin

If it were not blasphemous one could well
Imagine Him enthroned beneath it on
A matching bronze cast seat, acanthus leaves
Repeating in between the volutes of
The twice man sized Solomonic column
Supporting each armrest, His feet propped on
An Ottoman, receiving haughty prayers
From parishioners and ignoring the
Hum of tourists bumbling toward their
Next museum as quietly as bees.

21 February 2024 poem

the muskrat

after Marianne Moore

The muskrat,
“having all the best qualities
of the beaver but with
infinitely more charm”,
swims from bank

to bank of
likely water sources in search
for the best burrow place
he can provide his wife,
propelled by

webbed feet and
directed by the flattened scale–
bound rudder of his tail
which extends half his length.
The muskrat,

eager pro–
creator, is monogamous,
defends his family
by small underwater
entrances

into their
hovel, like the pangolin saves
his long claws for digging.
Like the pangolin he
seals his ears:

he against
the waters which he swims beneath
nearly twenty minutes
not needing new air, nor
noticed by

expectant
wake-watchful coyotes. “A sail–
boat was the first machine”,
invented when a mast
and canvas

were propped up
perpendicular to a raft
too long adrift. The musk–
rat is content to feed
from floating

platforms he
constructs without direction, like
his pushup hut when he
must build it above ground,
from offshoots

of the same
green stuff he eats. This Catholic fish
succeeds where many breeds
cannnot, protected from
sulfurous

waters by
a stubbornness which he mistakes
for grace, pursued, evades
his predators by his
industry.

Architect
and contractor, designer, he
receives the spring deluge
with equanimity
and prepares

to build a–
new. From wetland floor or shallow
streambed he brings up mud
with which he will refound
his house: mud

in which he
leaves the temporary pattern
of his twilit working
hours as he paces
back and forth

tail behind
him, night before, and contemplates
the inconsistent waves
that lap across his small
steady track.

18 February 2024 poem

half frame

To a shutter every    movement is one
frame after a frame   after a frame as
long as light lasts    a mystery resting
between the captured  moment to moment
changes and the true    events every frame
is a movement too   soon or too late
for the world which   can only so long and
in so many lights     make a smiling
face which rarely    stands still to be taken

16 February 2024 poem

migration

The geese cannot be pleased to see
more snowshod ground than when they left.
The season has been kind to them,
too kind, and they have shed their deep

down feathers of resentment and
thrown off despair to cry with the
impassioned convert, I am free —
I fly now for the promised land!

30 January 2024 poem

aftermath

The television turns to shadowed moors
Where harmless made-up murders are performed

14 January 2024 poem

advisory

The warning from the weather service came:
tomorrow you will be confronted with
the unfamiliar memory of a year
ago, when just before Thanksgiving Day,
unseasonably early, fell such gifts
of snow that homebound busybodies feared

for their commute, and in the cold the trees
stood braced and shivering beside the road,
and frost flocked cedar limbs resplendent in
an alb and stole of quietness were leaned
long suffering above the low cold stones
of Brush Point. Following your tracks through drifts

of snow like fallen waves, you’ll crest the last
to see a plot prepared for burial,
dug down to dirt and clouded in a mist
of well intended words: forgiveness asked,
a benediction lingering to fall
to earth as gently as a parting kiss.

13 January 2024 poem

epiphany

Prior conceptions
go up in a flash,
the gospel acted
out as long ago
when no one could read

and to be exposed
to the word of God
required something
overdramatic
for an offering,

embroidered robes or
feats of memory,
faith was sustained as
extinguishable
shivering candles

at night were maintained
for the dead by the
dying, when shadows
lengthened and children
struggled to attend

their eyes flickering
from ceiling to floor,
catching a sight of
the preacher’s hand raised
to stifle a yawn

7 January 2024 poem

“in transit”

And so I’m on my way to see my sister,
my sister who has cancer, a man says.
The driver nods. And I have cancer myself
you know, the brain, I shouldn’t be alive
today, except — He never gives us any
thing more than we can handle, yes, she knows —
But who decides when too much pain is enough?
I do my time, get out of jail and there
she is, about to die, he says. A quiet
persists too long. She nods. But here you are,
she says, a kindness none of us can manage.
To look another person in the eye
is difficult; to be ignored is brutal.

6 January 2024 poem

new year

A double yolk! Auspicious signs
begin at breakfast for a year
of heartiness. The sky is clear
enough, the cat slept through the night,

the Hawks have lost their final game —
the universe, in other words,
is not today as we deserve
and will be better once arranged

for peace and not convenience, but
it is familiar. The insane
incessant chattering of lame
excuses falters over what

is possible, the posture of
the new year upright broad and long.
A resolution, then: when wrong
admit it. Never put above

good sport the serious. Display
whenever possible the same
true face to everyone. Repay
with interest the given day.

1 January 2024 poem

chaconne

Ascending
figures meet
descending
harmonies

to make a
melancholy
sort of piece,
the varied

incidents
of human
feeling on
display in

moving and
unchanging
patterns: as
a frost-filled

lake at night
reflects the
uncounted
faces of

the moon, as
a slow dance
teaches one
how to step,

as dawn comes.
The only
modulation
is to brief

unfurling
hopefulness,
and then it
is music

once again.
A player
under spot
light thinking

fast, figures
ascending
in the dark
toward the

exits, and
a murmur
underneath
it all like

a river
coursing in
its banks, a
distant flood

30 December 2023 poem

boy with piccolo

(John French Sloan)

Too pleased with absent-minded praise to let
it show, you carefully arrange your face
into a picture of the boy I met
outside my door, his collar turned up, braced
against the silent and unflattering street,
and you refuse to play again. The note
reverberates between us, dies. I see
it anyway: a quick and quavering mote
descending out of shadow into light
and out again, a grin you can’t conceal
that knows so much at such an age. When I
record you I will paint the pride you feel
as blush upon your warming cheeks, as thin
and dextrous fingers poised, a breath drawn in.

21 December 2023 poem

september

It is cool in the
mornings again! Dew
catches on spider
webs! Crickets stuff their
hands in their pockets!

7 September 2023 poem

“taller today”

Growing
up is
such a
pain

30 August 2023 poem shorts

leo

for Mom & Dad

It’s August, and your sign lounges
underneath the sun of summer,
lolls a lazy tongue, and rumbles
distant thunder in its throat. How
lovely that one month can bear as
at scratch of claw and tip of tail
your two holidays, between them
the long hot plain of plain hot days,

and while you sit beside a camp
fire seasoning the summer air
with ember memory, above,
in gaps between still leaves, pairs of
fireflies circle silently where
in half a year your sign will rise
and rampant bare its broad and star–
studded chest, gape its maw and roar.

30 August 2023 poem de-stellis