I am a retired professor of French, living in New York City, taking painting lessons, and writing. This year I was pleased to have two books published by small presses: The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014) and Wars Don’t Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2015). 

In the Bleak Midwinter


The seller of Christmas trees
laments the weight and strain
of carrying Christmas on his shoulder

like the Wise Men
crossing starlit plains
with gifts to soothe a child,
    
like my mother
decking a tree with presents
to console us for an absence,

like me and my two kids
when, on our own, we 
set up the ladder,

trimmed the plump Scotch pine,
hung a popcorn garland,
unraveled long electric strings, 
and lit the fragile bulbs.
 
O seller of evergreens, 
do not lament. 

Behold my sons!
Behold our tipsy star! 





I’ll Believe It When I Sing It


In a nursery, the tune, plus simple gestures 
of the wrist, hand, and arm, 
create the spout, the rain, the sun, 
and a spider crawling up again.

When I lived on a farm,
a rough wooden crib 
stood in the barn 
where a cow and donkey fed. 

The time two campers came with a baby  
and borrowed the trough as his bed
we heard altos and sopranos 
sing in Excelsis Deo  

and everything 
they sang that night was so.