December 2024
Bio Note: How do I keep the cold out? Partially by living in North Carolina, but also by love, as expressed in these three poems. The second and third poems are included in my poetry book, To Drink from a Wider Bowl. My most recently published poem is "Daniel Ellsberg is Interviewed a Few Weeks Before He Died at 92 Years Old" in the November issue of South Florida Poetry Journal.
Woman and Man in Snow
after a Fred Stein photograph, “Embrace, Paris”
In the dark street, slick and silenced by snow,
a woman and a man embrace.
Beneath a streetlamp that haloes them above their shadows.
No sign of a car, not even a stray cat stealing a sliver of midnight
from a shivering moon.
Maybe they are hugging hello, maybe goodbye,
with coats so thick, fingers gloved,
it must be impossible
to feel each other’s heartbeat.
No, more than possible. Maybe they’re young in love
and relish the rest of the world’s loneliness.
Have you held that moment, at least once in your life,
when you could not have been any warmer−
even in a blizzard so blinding it all turned out to be a mirage?
Originally published in Dodging the Rain
Under Construction
inspired by my grandson
Loader, excavator, backhoe−
creaking toy wheels
across the couch’s cushions,
my two-year old teaches me
the vocabulary of construction.
He drums the sofa’s arm
to a beat in his head, abandons it
to circle himself dizzy, tips
the pink teapot
so imaginary tea gurgles
into the cup. His laughter
curls like steam.
Polka-dotted apron
sweeping his ankles,
brow creased, he steers the wooden
spoon to chase clouds of flour
inside the bowl, plops
sticky biscuits into the pan.
No one has lined him up yet, boys
on one side, girls on the other.
Fragments of light twist
through his cardboard
kaleidoscope, spinning images
of everything he could become.
From To Drink from a Wider Bowl (Evening Street Press)
Sunrise Sonnet for My Son
My son unloads the dishwasher first thing
each morning. I think of him, four hundred
miles away, as I stand on tiptoe to shelve
last night’s wine glasses, stack my mother’s
dessert plates, open the drawer beneath
the oven just deep enough for all the pots
and pans. He says for him, too, it’s a kind
of meditation, this routine he and his wife
have shaped into the contours of a shared
life, fluted and spacious as the overflowing
fruit bowl. This is what he possesses, not
Lenox or Waterford, which neither of us owns,
this man I raised, who hums as he sorts
the silverware, noticing how each spoon shines.
From To Drink from a Wider Bowl (Evening Street Press)
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