Of Love and Laundry

So very many things
In this fractured world connive
To come between us, love.
It’s hard to keep the white noise
Of busyness and distraction
From thickening around us.
But tonight I watched your trousers
Tumbling with my t-shirts.
Now embracing,
Now parting,
Now meeting again.
And can there be less hope
For us than for our laundry?
What was soiled becomes clean.
The pretense of separation vanishes.
Return again, [...]

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A Lesson

If at first your arrow should fall
Hardly halfway to your target,
Like an injured sparrow to the ground,
Pull another from your quiver.
Notch it on your bow with tenderness –
A callous touch will throw the whole thing off
As the bowstring twangs its disapproval
On your already throbbing fingers.
Hold it taut and true and then release,
And even if your [...]

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I Know the Past is with us Still

And when I spent a morning visiting
Remnants of another city’s bygone youth,
Passing through dark passageways to
Low-ceilinged rooms with faded tapestries
Lit solely by anemic daylight seeping in
Through narrow casement windows,
Climbing winding stairs as my
Tentative fingers traced a path along
Banisters worn smooth by other hands
In time well out of living memory,
I thought of a small girl who [...]

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Downslope

Surely it was inevitable,
This slowing down of yours,
Hands softer now for lack of labor
In your long-abandoned fields,
Muscles weaker, joints that
Creak and pop when flexed,
Clothes that hang just a whisper
Looser on your sloping frame.
And finally, you must admit,
You too are bound by all the
Bitter rules of human form,
You who always claimed that
A smart and cautious man [...]

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Revelations

 
 I don’t remember ever seeing
The joy that is reflected
So brightly in the picture -
The brilliant smiles and
Entwined hands,
The leaning into one another
That suggests an ease that
I surely never witnessed.
You buried your first husband
At the age of twenty four,
And then the second nearly
Died of drink at twenty eight,
In a coma three full weeks
Following the accident
While your [...]

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On Resilience

I’ve seen how the warmth returns,
When crocuses push through the frozen ground,
Their fragile spring-green arms raised parallel
To one another in their hopeful reaching for the sun
In answer to the earth’s mysterious call.
I’ve watched children on the playground
Toss a dodge ball back and forth -
Give it just one bounce and then it’s safe,
Gently cradled in your [...]

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On Satisfaction

She got tangled up in her dreams, sometimes.
It wasn’t because of money (or the lack of it).
It wasn’t about the time that dreaming took or the
Thousand other things that drew her gaze away.
She didn’t know quite what it was about,
To tell the honest truth,
But she understood this much –
Sometimes the life you want to live [...]

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Sometimes Things End

It began with that,
A sullen mantra that chased her
Home through darkened streets,
Slipping catlike past her feet
And into her apartment where it
Joined her as she lay in her small bed
And stared for endless hours at the ceiling.
Sometimes things end.
Sometimes they change,
And realistically she knew
That changes can be good
But not this change,
Not this one,
Not right now.
Perhaps tomorrow [...]

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Broken Sofa

I think of them sometimes, two boys just this side of cynical
Enjoying the stares from passersby as they recline on their prize -
A garish green vinyl couch with pumpkin-colored cushions -
Right there on the sidewalk where they’ve stopped to rest
For a few minutes before shouldering their load again,
Stopping once or twice more on their slow [...]

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On Being Fourteen

 
-~-~-~-~ 
We were hardly more than children
That morning when we crept
Out of camp before the dawn
To walk along the lakeshore,
Faces lifted toward the sky
As the Perseids fell shining
Across the inky expanse above.
We didn’t touch, quite,
But I could feel your warmth
Close beside me as we
Leaned out over the bridge,
Laughing as we dropped pebbles
That disturbed the still surface
Of [...]

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