Stand By Me


The road ahead, the view, 
the song on the radio.
At its first strains, she 
looks away and in, out
the passenger window.

It’s a song we both knew 
before we knew each other,
and I’m jealous of the sudden
dreamy content in her voice
as she sings softly along.  

I want to be that memory.
 




Raised by Grace


Just when I felt small enough 
to fit into my Roy Rogers 
lunchbox, and my fear 
almost made me piss myself, 
the weight of simple words

from Grace, the crossing guard, 
“Come on now, sugar,” settled 
with her arm on my shoulder, 
and led me away from two older boys 
who’d arrayed around me on the curb, 

more menacing than the gloomy, 
bone-clutching cold on that raw, 
rainy November morning, 
and I wanted to lean into the folds 
of her yellow slicker and cry.
 



Paranoia 


Careening through her subterranean world, 
her fears clutching her boy’s hand too tightly, 
he might have known desperation.  

But his legs were too short, his mind still 
too hopeful to follow the narrowing furrows 

spiraling in on the same ramparted destination, 
time and again, retarding ordinary events.  
He prayed for God to help her, and to be

there, which the boy had begun to doubt.  He cried,
too, wanting to be old enough to leave them both.  



Brothers-in-Arms
Nothing is harder on mortal man than wandering.  -Homer


Lonely survivor years, I’ve watched you 
in the park, rummaging garbage cans and talking 
to some raging in your blood, fire-soot smudges 
marking your face and hands.  Brother-in-arms, 
witness, survivor, fellow bearer of the mark of blood
and fire, we swore never to leave each other behind 
and to carry anyone we saw die, so it’s hard to see 
you still a prisoner of war and slow suicide.  

I have my own roster of dead.  Bad nights, 
reciting from the memorial wall in my head, 
I’ve driven or walked to escape recall’s recoil.  
Late and far, I’ve talked to myself, cried and regretted 
our dead.  But like tracers that never tamed the dark, 
I can’t save you anymore than I could save them.   



Beauty
One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.
                                                                              Loren Eisley, The Unexpected Universe

The forest was a messy mix
of mud and ice, and long fallen
leaves made a slick, mysterious,
muddle of decay and miracle

underfoot.  I followed tracks
on and off trails, marked the evidence
of scat and chewed bark, 
until three deer snapped 

to attention at my slogging
approach to the clearing
where they grazed.  
Through tree trunks,

a steady, feathery snow,
and the steam streaming
from their muzzles,
their eyes took hold of me.

None of us were able 
to move or let go in that
dense, suspenseful medium,  
until one snorted.

The other two turned, 
leaped and bounded away.
Then, something else changed.
The eyes of the remaining deer --

born of the forest,
chestnut black and brown,
acorn round – blazed darkly
and blinkless, and would not

release me.  My stare was just
as stubborn.  I didn’t know what
more the moment might want,
or why beauty is so fearsome.


Credit: "Beauty" appears in A Tide of a Hundred Mountains (Bright Hill Press, 2012)