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On Testing Positive

2008-03-16T00:57:00.003-05:00

Don’t look
at angry men
resigned to padded beds
and lounging chairs.
Turn yourself
from swift-tongued women
caught in fearsome cotton-balled explosions.

The curtain cannot hide the commode,
and ears aren’t made for acrobatics.

This day will come.
Remember youth’s abundance
its jelly rolling and long eyelashes,
the triumphs of bedding a new spouse.

In The Garden

2007-11-18T09:21:00.000-05:00

Saturday Morning

2007-08-25T07:07:00.001-05:00

Bring the Sun Down

2007-07-26T16:38:00.000-05:00

Bring the sun down
past the fir tree sentinels,
tramp it down
beneath the fresh laid sod.

Sit here on the stoop
and whisper with me
until fifty stars are counted
and I will light the oil lamp.

The day has released its weight
into a glittering mobile.
Hear my lullaby
and leave the world to slumber.

sugar maple leaves

2007-02-12T05:34:00.000-05:00

A huddle of smoke backed up
against the leeward side of McGintry’s,
an overflow of patrons
air-writing anger or laughing
in tag-team fashion
unfazed by the screech of tires
turning the corner of Aiken Ave.,
the spill of arms
from a passenger side window,
the firecrackers,
Bobby’s drunken stumble from the curb.
Until the fall--
and sugar maple leaves
on a silk shirt.

clear

2006-08-11T16:02:00.000-05:00

the tone
of wind chimes,

or soprano solo,

the trickling stream
uncivilized,

child’s lung,

pristine quest.

Clear,

A crash cart cry,
flourish, burn,

a seizing, searing fight,

an angel’s flight.

bottom's up!

2006-08-09T05:13:00.000-05:00

Corner Coffee Shop

2006-07-17T05:27:00.000-05:00

Listen to the back-
to-back talk between booths at Vic’s,
Sunday morning conversations,
songs of sun and lawns and new arrivals,
tiffs to smooth before the in-laws visit,
calls to neighbors just in from the 9:15
from others who’ll attend a later Mass,
a playback of last night’s game
and the story about blue
herons alighting in your backyard.

all abuzz

2006-07-09T16:02:00.000-05:00

clematis

2006-06-29T15:40:00.000-05:00

honeysuckle

2006-06-28T17:16:00.000-05:00

the tiller and the trespasser

2006-06-18T05:10:00.000-05:00

There is
in the blossoming of honeysuckle—
God. Sweet in its embrace,
it does not distinguish
nor deny.

a wash

2006-06-12T18:20:00.000-05:00

She’d never learned to sort her laundry
choose between the silk, damask or denim.
Never thought to keep the dark from lights
or hang her delicates to dry.

She never bothered to lay
sweaters out upon a toweled bed.
She only kept her bra straps closed
to prevent snagging on her lace.

not

2006-05-09T04:37:00.000-05:00

Come home
before the tulips fail,
before the last petals fall
revealing stamen-eyes
peering from paling leaves
and find you are not
here in my garden.

Web

2006-05-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

We bind to those we touch,
connect with fine filaments
which stretch out to safe havens,
pull in from precipices,
protect.

And though friends die
the filament does not fray
nor the connection end.
We remain joined.

Therefore build your web
full and strong, unfurled
in countless rays
lest in death
your un-tethered soul sinks.

encounter

2006-05-05T08:02:00.000-05:00

She walks a steady pace
of back and forth, breath rolling
across her feline tongue
lolling between yellowed teeth
and watches.

The child toddles
unsteady, gleeful steps
cooing, tongue drooling,
wet fists painting
the plexi-glass between.

Days

2006-05-05T07:57:00.000-05:00

I mark the map
with soldiers born a thousand miles away
and wonder when you'll return home safe.
I mark the days.

And then the news arrives
with half-mast flag of border state
I bow my head
and mark the days.

The neighboring town
bedecked in yellow ribbon
pays tribute to her fallen son,
as I mark the days.

I hear the broken heart
whose beat is stalled upon a final note of Taps,
a mother's sob next door.
I mark the days.