The House We Had to Sell


This is the house we lived in, white as a bride.
Mozart is echoing the birds outside.
We’re sitting at the table playing gin.
My son is laughing every time he wins
Because he’s eight, because we’re all in love,
Living the future we’re still dreaming of.
Spring is in the mountains, green as Oz,
In the fresh-cut flowers in the crystal vase,
Mirroring the garden where the bees are thick.
Though everyone was dying, dead or sick,
These were our uncontaminated hours,
Like bottled water sipped by scissored flowers,
Permanent in memory, sealed by the pain
That childhood ends, and we can’t go home again.





Three Dimensions


The lilacs, the geraniums, a dove,
The fulsome ivy over dark brown wood,
The raucous children in a neighbor’s yard,
The smell of burning frankfurters and steak.

The depth of beauty in our garden door
Frame seems immortal in this dying light.
If we could hold the present as a breathless note,
A clarinetist’s long pianissimo,
    
We could achieve the presence of the dove
Who perches on a young girl’s fire escape.
She feeds it tidbits with her dainty hand
On which is tattooed a green wedding band.
    


​

The Doctor


Reviewing the century
Decades of which I half-remember
Like thumbing great modernist
Poems, their rhythms
Comfortably familiar,
I stop at Dr. Williams
Who before the war
Which shaped my life
Wrote of pain, plain and simple
In his quotidian town
Where he walked
His house-calls bag
Swinging like a bell,
A stone.