I am a husband, father, rabid backyard gardener, and blogger on nature, books, films and other subjects based on the premise that there's a garden metaphor for everything. Still utopian and idealistic after all these years, I cover the arts for the Boston Globe's 'South' regional section. My poems have been published recently by The Poetry Superhighway, Bombay Review, Semaphore Journal and other journals. Some poems were also accepted for the upcoming anthology "Peace: Give it a Chance," and a collection of poems (titled "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty") will be published in 2016 by Coda Crab Books.  "Suosso's Lane," my novel about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, was recently published by Web-e-Books.com.​

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A Row of Stones: Calverton National Cemetery 


It looks like all the rest
slotted in this final postwar census, this straight-line campground of eternity,
a parking lot for identical souls
a computer punch card, names in the phonebook,
the roll call for hereafter,
the Levittown of the life to come

It looks, almost, like the line-up of all the local men,
stretching from here to God,  
who once were young on any given day
Dress them in Army green
and lay them down in straight lines without number 
on the battleground where future always conquers past 
in an age we thought would never end 

His gravestone looks... like all the others,
laid to rest exactingly in lines identical and perfectly straight, 
the Army way, the regimental way of passage, 
this permanent occupation of a grassy plain 'out East' on the island 
where he planted his back-home, postwar fortunate flag
never to wander, really, plowing the highways on the city commute 
never to leave the good ol' USA
and never, he said, to stand in line again
(I won't tell him if you don't)

They made it home, those who lie beneath these stones  
facing straight ahead, 
comrades to left and right, messmates, men of a generation 
who did not fall in wintry France 
nor plunge to doom from the infinite Pacific sky
but passed in cooler times, 
doing their bit for the world that came after,
the world that they made safe for us 

I number his grave goods, now the hour's long past, 
bowling league trophies, pool hall cue
German rifle (Mauser, maybe) shot from the hands 
of an enemy patrol in the Nice Triangle, 
barkeep paraphernalia, little mixer sticks, 
cut glass bowls for lemon twists 
barbeque apron, cotton hat and silly stenciled T-shirt 
"Who invited all these tacky people?"
paintbrush, hammer, handsaw,
pen and pencil, adding machine 

Space, I wonder, in the final straight-line muster 
for an old Dodge Dart, most enduring companion of the road, 
the ashtray almost always full


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Interpreting Silence


A generation's survivor
No one will ever know what that childhood was like
Vegetables, but no meat
A father, but no mother
A place of business (what sort? a saloon?)
but, eventually, no home 

Returned from the greatest human catastrophe 
since the Black Death, or Genghis Khan,
the soldier built a life in the image of his life and times 
No standing in lines, no travel beyond the Sisyphean climb 
of the daily commute, 
a few bucks from the GI Bill 
bridged in just the right places 

Unfailing courtesy, ideal worker,
tolerant boss, 
reliable tipper and a friendly word
Night-school texts locked up in the attic,
'freshman' essays marked up in red

A good soldier through life's four quarters,
happy to survive the wider catastrophes 
that laid millions low
Accepting all parts from the playwright Chance 

performed with grace, a sense of duty
Personal reflections withheld till the curtain falls




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Four Brothers 


Heroic faces in fading pics
A look, we know, that oft deceives
Four young brothers, a hand with tricks 

Last days before deployment grieves
Four volunteers, four uniforms
Each his own story open leaves 

Four lives blown by terrestrial storms
Bodies sewn in earth on distant shores
The war they fight no tale conforms 

The call they answer is their own
Their dangers faced, their duty done 
Back pay, demobbed, some welcome home 

Civil lives lived one by one
Yet wounds may linger, old ties fray 
Four lives fade: smoke rings in the sun

Life's costs they paid in time's own way
Down-paid ours too: four Dads to thank
In each heart a Veterans Day