Old Wooden Doors
(after a photo taken on a side street in Beirut)

What faces do we see 
in the bone mirrors of long-ago trees?
A long-closed portal 
to an unknowable life,
lost decades before like the city that was, 
hidden beneath the mask 
of an ancient plague called simply "the war."
No war now.
Merely the routine clamor 
of the mind-fogging traffic.
This wall of doors has taken the veil
Patient as the ages, it watched a city crumble,
reclaim its pieces 
burred with time like furred candy,
make up its face again
smile and grimace in the lightweight days of not yet summer, 
a day that lets the caged bird sing
from the balcony.

No one sees you, 
face of ages.
Overlooked by the steel-and-glass surgeons 
who humble generations of beauty plain as day
to build walls of a different, breathless skin
that will never look
and wear a smile, Olympian, 
like yours.




​
Seasons End and So Do We (But Not Yet)


The first cautious step, sniffing roses in the dooryard, 
invites the last 
Even a journey of ninety-something days ends
in back-to-school shopping
We celebrate our beginnings. Endings? 
Not so much.

Thunder rumbles in the late afternoon
rolling in like the rumor of bad vibes in the markets,
anticipation of still more "--exits" 
Dislocations in the planetary system,
Mars rumored heading for another galaxy
No gentle rain on the asters 
but a deluge, say, of jellyfish, a shower of octopi,
starfish served up in a salty cloud
What do these so-called angry gods have to be 
mad about? 
We're the ones who do the heavy lifting

When we wake tomorrow,
whenever that tomorrow is, 
it will still be summer in the calendar of life, 
warm damp air to breathe, noses to rub
in the milkweed pollen of forever
souls to embrace, beloved necks to fall upon
once more





An Ordinary Day in Quincy


The police car, siren screaming, climbs up my rear
on a busy street 
Thunderstorms loom in the forecast
parking lot filled  
But a girl is playing the Celtic harp
in a cement amphitheatre entirely empty of human ears
and I know the song
"That's Carolan, isn't it?" 
"It is" 
How long since I've heard it?
Why have I forgotten it? 
Sometimes an old song knows the answer to all the questions
So I spend all my money at the farmers' market
tell the Arab shawarma seller that I've been to Lebanon
and we both like Greece, 
buy dinner from him
And though the girl (all women, at my age, having returned to girls)
is still playing her fabulous, fable-made harp to a vacancy 
of stony seats 
its voice filling all the spaces in the universe
all the quiet places in sad hearts made inexplicably happy
on a hot July day, 
swelling beneath real and imagined afflictions, 
lifting lifts all boats
raising a speechless tide in which we float and preen
and lie on our backs and hums snatches of old songs 
I coax a smile from a silent man in Dunky,
more sirens on Hancock Street,
and adopt a sickly plant no sane gardener would look at twice 
because in my confession every soul deserves a chance 
at a second life (and a little music),
especially plants.





I Flee Them Now  


I flee them now, 
the feral beggars of the Syrian Catastrophe,
that fiery execution and slow-burn decomposition of a nation 
in which the New World Order 
dumbly colludes, rubbing its two-faced chin 
Why should they not run me down, 
strip me of value, market my flesh and bones, 
render my trace elements useful in the end?
I do no good for them now
my tongue dumb, my outrage numb,
my well-intended prayers for peace of no account 
when what's required is salvation on-the-ground 

Robbed of their childhood, 
denuded of home, country, kinship, future, 
stranded in a world of strangers,
why not fling their hungers at the impotent bystanders
whose bellies are full,
whose tongues fail to shake the palaces of power
whose fortunate existences mock their stolen lives?
I have no country to give them.