To My Brother


You came tumbling down
from your upstairs bed
with heavy steps
and that wry grin
 
“No wonder I couldn’t wake up," 
you said.
 
We both laughed
as I turned down the volume
on a Brahms symphony.
 
Today, with strains of Bach in the air -
Sheep and Lambs
May Safely Graze
 
I pray these sounds
are heard in heaven
 
and almost feel
your footsteps on the stairs.





Early Spring


Shadows of bare branches
dance and play
in the yellow grass

Sky keeps her lights on late
and the March wind bellows

calling his children home
for dinner





Why I Don’t Write in Classic Forms


The muse of poetry 
tumbles around the floor
of the world
until she lands at a spot on my pen,
attempts a difficult double-flip

and falls flat on her back. 

Rising early, inspired, one morning
I sang a sonnet song
and the cats, in circles, ran around
while dogs in the neighborhood, they did howl.

I labored to build a pantoum bridge
got halfway across the river,
repeated myself
but at the wrong time
and down it went
into the water
sinking like a ton of rhymes. 

So I wish you the best,
swimming in your sestina soup
or building that village of villanelles

but the only device I'll ever come up with
is, once in a while, to rhyme a couplet.




Tanka (same term for singular and plural) is a short poem of five lines in length, which engages the imagination. Good tanka suggests far more than it actually says. Tanka is a Japanese form, which predates haiku. Tanka is sometimes, but not always, a haiku with two lines added. Writers have much more flexibility in writing tanka than they do in writing haiku.   –K.S.



Ten Tanka



playing Bridge
with Mom –
she lays down
a winner in hearts
every single day



before my no’s
can grab their weapons –
saying yes
I drop a few bucks
in a beggar’s cup



his daughter
rests her head on his shoulder,
the man at church
they said I wouldn’t like
if I really knew him



newly-weds
at eighty-seven
holding hands -
the space beneath the chair
where his legs once were



lobsters
crawling over each other
with claws bound
do they believe that hand
has come down to save them?



the moon hangs
pale in a winter sky
at the nursing home
her father’s face
still unshaved



in the kitchen
mom polishes her nails
with a trembling hand
brushing us all
with a soft glow of silence



on the wall
sharing my shower…
a spider
let’s pretend, my friend
we never saw each other
                                    –Gusts 16



tiny crabs
scurry for their holes…
I promise, friends
to tread softly
and carry no stick
                –Atlas Poetica 12



on a shelf
in her dining room...
the red truck
her father bought
hoping for a boy
                   –A Hundred Gourds – 2.1




Reconciling
(a tanka sequence)

 
her words
stir something deep
at a loss
I cast my line
in shallow waters

both of us
without umbrellas
hand in hand
we run for cover
into therapy

lily pads
like tangled hearts…
in kayaks
we search for where
we entered the water
                    
shivering together 
we search among the clouds 
for the moon... 
those clear summer nights 
I never even looked
                           –Red Lights 9.1