One Good Thing


It’s been a dead parade
of hours since 5 AM,
a march of the bland
with the meaningless and 
I can think of nothing
I have done to merit 
mentioning or
remembering.

But now, at 8 pm,
I am bathing my son
in a tub filled with bubbles
and blue battleships,
the soapy water over
his Irish white skin
makes him glisten
like a glazed doughnut

and I should tell him
to stop splashing
but this is the first time
all day I have felt like living
so how can I scold
my boy who’s found joy
in something ordinary 
as water? And when

I wash his hair 
with Buzz Lightyear
shampoo, Liam
closes his eyes and
smiles like a puppy
being petted as I massage
the sweet lotion into  
his red curls and I know

this is one good thing
I have done with my life
this day that has waited
for this moment  
of water on my sleeve 
and soap on my nose
to turn emptiness
into ecstasy.


2014 Runner-Up in Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books National Poetry Contest and 
was featured on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac, September 15, 2014.





After Adultery

The broken-
hearted other
spouse sits
with coffee
staring out 
at the moon
alone 
in sky,
round 
as a ring.





Champion
  for Luz Long

 I’ve seen in black and white
 footage how you were pure gold
 losing the long jump to Jesse Owens,
 an American man whom Hitler
 called “a non-human from the jungle.”  
 Where in the swastika-filled stadium
 did you find the courage to embrace 
 the black athlete who had beaten you
 in front of your leader who 
 had no room in his life for love
 of one so different from you,
 his fair-haired, blue eyed 
 model of his master race?
 I’ve seen the films of you
 losing then walking the track
 with your arm around Jesse Owens
 and his arm around you
 grinning like brothers,
 teaching Berlin and the world
 how one who loses can still be
 a champion, can still tame hatred 
 for an Olympic moment
 as Hitler stared from on high
 looking stunned and alone
 like a demon homesick for hell.