You are my GPS


If I fell into Robert Frost’s poem,
it wouldn’t matter which road I took,
I’d get lost anyway. 

I would call you to confess that
I’d daydreamed past street signs,
forgot to count the stop lights, and

now the road is as unfamiliar to me
as the  poetry  at my destination is to you.
You’d ask what I see out the window,

then tell me to go up two blocks, or turn
around and go back six  where there will
be a red brick church across from a diner

at the intersection that will take me where
I need to go.  You always know exactly
where I am – Mission Control to this

perpetually off-course satellite – who
will return to find you asleep in the light
of the muted TV,  the cat curled on your

chest,  his  head at your chin,  your
hand on the phone beside you –
waiting to talk me home.

                   (Previously published in Exit 13 Magazine)

  


Sixteen Days


We celebrated our birthdays in June, mine
on the tenth and yours on the twenty-sixth, 
1952 babies, now a half-century plus, who
had the luck to have been born in what you
thought was the most perfect month of the year.

I brought a card to your hospital room
that read “Happy Birthday to an Oldie,”
and, when opened,  played “In the still of the night,”
Our joke, because I loved Doo Wop and you said
that it offended your self-proclaimed “musical snob soul.”

Your smile took over your shrinking face. In
in a voice weakened from too many intubations,
you reminded me that I would always be sixteen
days older than you.  I did not tell you that the new
cleaning lady on that oncology floor had just looked
in your door and asked if you were my father.

By that birthday, you had been there seven months.
I ‘d signed for each new procedure and for units of
blood and platelets. I was well versed in frightening
infections. I’d held your shivering hands while we
waited for the ice blankets to bring down the fevers.

The parking attendant had stamped my long term pass
more than a hundred times, always asking my familiar
face  “how  are you?” before raising the gate. On that
birthday night he tapped the card with your name, asked
gently if you were my child - and I said yes.  

                         (Previously published in The Paterson Literary Review)


  
The Chapter Between

       Perhaps love is the process of my gently leading you back to yourself.
                                                           -Antoine de Saint Exupery

There was fresh bread on the table the night
we broke up. You leaned against the counter,
wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I held my handful
of un-cooked spaghetti until the pot boiled dry.

All these years later we connect on the Internet.
You send me pictures of your house and the three
dogs you call your “kids.”  I send you wedding
pictures, and one of my granddaughter in her pink tutu.

We trade e-mail memories, vignettes released
from their suspension in time. You tell me you
 “Googled” me and found I was a poet. I tell
you about publications and readings, but not

that I’d never written a poem about you.
You held the car radio in your hands, its wires
dangling, insides half visible and exposed to
the fall afternoon. You watched until I noticed

you, then bent to reconnect each wire with its mate
before you slid it back into place and looked up to
smile at the woman whose eye you wanted to catch. 
You were the chapter between a bad marriage and the

rest of my life.  You put Stephan Grappelli on the stereo
and turned up the volume.  You stood behind me until I
stopped looking over my shoulder.  You were all the
things I’d forgotten without repercussions, and oh –
                                      
You were black silk stockings and making love on the
living room floor. You were my healing pages. 
And if you read this poem – your poem –
I cannot recall the discussion the night you

left,  but I remember the first words you said
when we met,  how safe you made me feel,  and
how the moonlight made shadows on the curve
of your jaw as you slept.  

                                  Previously published in The Paterson Literary Review)



A Dog’s Life

I have always had substantial dogs,
Collies, Pit Bulls, hardy mixed breeds.
Dogs with height and girth that
required thick collars and leashes,
strong arms, children to run and roll with them.
They were table clearing tail-waggers,
sizable obstacles asleep on the floor.

This new dog who found me
and came to live in our empty nest,
is the kind I’d never imagined.
She is small, white, fluffy and French.
She shadows my footsteps, sleeps in my lap.
She has a wardrobe, a pink bowl,
a sweet perception of her rightful place.

I got my first dog when I was eight.
Now I’m in my sixties.
Poodles live well into their teens.
Sometimes when she joins me for a nap,
tucks her head, and settles in with a sigh,
I wonder if she will be the last one.

                              (Previously published in Lips Magazine)

 

I’m Not Elizabeth Barrett


I hate the way you brush your teeth
all wet and white and foamy,
I hate the way you cut your meat
and how you roll baloney.

I hate the way you lick your fingers
before you turn each page,
I hate the way you check each coin
before you pocket change.

I hate the way you wear your socks
with heels and toes askew,
I hate the way you mow the lawn
and curse each week that grew.

I hate the way you park the car
and never get it straight,
I hate the way you gobble food
and disparage what you ate.

I hate the way you sniff the air
and predict there will be rain,
I hate to wonder every day
If you ever had a brain.

I hate the way you squint your eyes
at everything you see,
I hate the way I feel for you
So will you marry me?