​The Cobbler


There’s stillness on the street.
Clouds vanish
as streetlights flicker
and nocturnals roam.

In his locked store, the cobbler
is at his bench with one desklight.
He hammers grommets onto leather
supple as a mirage.

Behind the darkened window,
his awls, his fingers, his craft.

He pours himself into Sunday wingtips
that will touch the grass beneath an arbor,
leaves rustling above. 

The cobbler will know the steps
of their every dance.

(The Galway Review)



And on the Second Day it was Tuesday


And on the second day it was Tuesday.
And you may have had an angry fight
and woken up brittle and purple with sadness
but now you must act like nothing happened
and make coffee, and maybe French toast,
put on nylons and maybe that lovely necklace
you got last Christmas, or a bracelet,
or your watch…

and the maids trudge the last mile up the hill
from the bus stop, to spend 6 hours washing
other people’s sheets and dusting other people’s
hardwood floors, tired before they get there,
and sunlight reflects off the white undersides
of shorebirds, commented on only by the homeless
who share a bench and a smoke on Pier Avenue
who have time to look, and carpools are driven, 

backpacks and flutes, and lunches forgotten
by the front door, and elevators are ridden,
telephones answered, plans made and
plants watered.  And you could scream
at the mind-numbing sameness of it all, 
and you hate yourself, but you go through
your paces, flawed and permanent,  like
a cheap painting on velvet, and never look back.

(Hobo Camp Review)