Rituals


Think of a baseball player
who, waiting on deck to bat,
takes three, four practice swings, 
then pauses at the plate
to refasten his gloves— 
                                before
facing  a pitcher who looms
on the mound just feet away

and you will understand
a poet who carries strong coffee
into a study walled
with blazing Van Gogh prints,
then rereads four Basho poems
he loves--
               before he looks
at a blank computer screen.

(previously published in WILDERNESS HOUSE LITERARY REVIEW)



An Aesthetic Belief


I don't care what birds they are
nor what they're flying to see:
their content can't compare
to their form—a perfect "V."





A Poetry Paradox


Your new book's poems display
a sensitivity
acute as a flower bud's
when it seeks April sunlight,

so why, now, at the front of a room
crammed with your admirers
do you shun the microphone

and, head bent over the lectern,
mumble an hour of words
that only your shoes can hear?





Decades Afterward


Even now,
the days of love
we shared
            will not,

like fallen petals,
lie quiet
in my memory
and wait to be arranged

into poems— 
            they still climb
and dip and climb
like sun-bright birds

            and fly away
each time I try
to capture them
in my outstretched words.

(previously published in SARASVATI)



Trust


During my decades
of peaks and plunges

                   came days
when a best friend
betrayed me.  So did

even the women
closest to my heart.

So too--oh, yes--
I have more 
than once

betrayed myself.
But however often

these betrayals put me
on trapdoors
quickly released

what has never
never proven false

is the pure white paper
that always
waits to help me

write a poem.