The Hearts of Horses


On a deserted country lane 
near the rough shore of Bolinas,
a friend and I stopped mid-road 
to talk as poets are wont to do, 
when a rumble, growing louder 
and louder growled from our right. 
A herd of mustangs, wild, strong, 
furious, ran across the road in front 
of our car and headed south, 
the rumble now a soft earth caress 
leaving us silent as statues, 
engraving the sight on memory 
to pen this moment we poets 
beg the muses to provide.





Summer and Smoke


An August day on the front porch.
Mom leans forward on a chair, 
the long Pall Mall in her right hand,
the left ready to pluck a tobacco
fragment from her tongue. I sit
on the metal glider, wince at its
grating, trying not to disturb her
attention from the radio booming 
campaign promises. My parents 
are primed for Ike because he led  
residents of the German town through 
graveyards of spent bodies, past 
the few, so few, who survived. Patton 
threw up, soldiers cried. Ike said, 
“Take pictures, sergeant, so the world 
will learn what neighbors chose
to ignore, what deniers will shroud, 
what history teachers must reveal
to remind us what bullies, 
left unchallenged, will do."