Itinerary 
“How Many People Have Lived on Earth?” 
107, 602, 707, 791 (Population Reference Bureau).

You’re sitting on a rock, hurtling along
at 2.7 million m.p.h. or more,
within a sea of stars, a billion strong,
zipping towards some stupid “galactic core.”
But your itinerary’s nothing but gaps,
as you sit atop your little blue-ish sphere,
just like the other 100 billion saps,
wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?”
Until you saw her earlier today,
strolling up Fordham Road, as if she knew
that you were watching, as if to say,
“I give purpose to everything I do,”
wearing a tight black sweater in the September breeze,
and tight to-die-for bright-white dungarees.





Waiting For You


Upstairs, you’re trying on dress after dress,
as I listen to music in a patient déjà vu.
We sleep away a third of our lives, more or less,
but I spend another third waiting for you:
picking your lipstick, fixing your lovely hair,
dilly-dallying in the grocery store,
browsing through junk in the attic somewhere,
choosing the “just right” movie, and a whole lot more.
So I listen, content, to music: “Walking the Floor,”
Motown, the Beatles, and “Everything’s All Right,”
waiting for you, the one worth-waiting-for,
who told me much too seriously one night:
“If you weren’t waiting for me, I’d stay in bed,
hate my life, and wish that I were dead.”





Sometimes . . .


Sometimes, she unexpectedly takes my hand,
or kisses my neck when we’re watching T.V.;
sometimes, when I’m inarticulate, she’ll understand
and logically explicate myself to me.
Sometimes, she’ll say with a mischievous smile,
“Let’s undress each other,” and I never say no;
sometimes, if I’ve been away for a while,
she’ll dedicate a song on the radio.
Sometimes she’ll buy me Christmas presents in June,
or February, September, March, or May;
sometimes, if she’s gone in the afternoon,
I’ll find little notes that say, “Have a Happy Today!”
Sometimes, she thinks of herself (when it has to be),
but, mostly, she thinks of others, like undeserving me.





Magic Hour


She’s lovely every minute of every day,
especially when the day’s begun, or day is done,
when light fades in, or fades away
in the first and last hours of the light of the sun;
when it travels farthest in the atmosphere,
with diminishing blue rays and less of the white,
as over-dense exposures disappear
in the “Rayleigh scattering” of the light;
when shadows diminish on every shape and form,
when blacks and glares and contrasts lose their power,
when colors are saturated, soft, and warm,
falling over my love in the “magic” hour,
lighting her face, her kindness, her love for me,
as beautiful as beautiful can be.