Poems

Saturday night. I should be on the cusp of sleep, but am awake, and you, soon enough adult, are off on a dark road home. You are on my mind, but I am not on yours, unless you think there might be trouble when you return, both early and late. You stand on the doorstep...

There aren’t enough fleas on this blanket for one dog, nor ticks in the trees for one man let alone two. The rain comes neatly as planned and the Sahara sand has been ruined with humus. Disease has been assaulted assiduously, killing off death until God has been...

Mr. Zobinsky the cat was fundamental love, not given as a matter of choice, but being as matter of fact. He had a predilection for presence. He was the whirling magneto around which the fractured fragments of our world revolved. Sitting at my desk I knew without...

She stood out of the earthquake shake of private sleep, ready as the sun is ready to face the dawn dark challenge of a stormy day. Hidden behind a formidable sky of weather, she flames with a fierce fire of affection, toward the many-peopled life she loves, teaching...

a thousand silver sentinels shimmer in the morning sun ticking away the worth of a nickel while their chromed matrons laze in the gutter content with uncertainty 1962    

How much space does light take up? When you flick on the light in a dark room, does the space in the place clutch you t i g h t e r ? 2015

The clock ticks, digits blink away, what is           dwells near what is not, presence revealed by absence.  Could we recognize the something without the nothing which allows?  Time subtracts from an absolute                      we do not know,          ...

It has been today for a very long time, years and years, one day longer than it has been yesterday, a day more often than it has been tomorrow which is on the verge but no guarantee. I remember a Tuesday late in June, 1952, bees in the hollyhocks, the killdeer’s...

We sat on lawn chairs, four friends in the shading dusk, breathing the brittle smoke of ancient cigarettes Carl had saved since the seventies for such a time as this, when a bit more inhaled tobacco dust would do little harm to our already old and leathered lungs. The...