Tag Archives: love

I was a river

I was a river when you found me, little bird.
You couldn’t bathe in the deeper parts of me
for fear of being swept away.
Instead you found some dissipated eddy
in which you could immerse yourself
and sing your titillating gratitude.
You marveled in my ebb and flow
and followed my tributaries as far as you dared.
Dark trees hung over me in which you could wait
for safety, to be fed,
or just to roost and hear my constant voice.
The change was nearly imperceptible at first.
A little softer
or a little lower down the mossy bank,
and you thought the winter runoff was ending early.
But it came and went, and still I changed,
twisting and turning on my own sandbars
until I covered twice the distance
with barely half the water—
then less.
From river to stream to brook,
and all of nature hedged me in
as banks retreated.
Many times you’ve flown to the source
to see what was the matter
only to find there’s nothing you can fix.
It may be that someday
I will find my course again,
and all my rivulets will become one
meandering no more, but raging,
crashing down and rising up
breaking the bars and blasting the trees,
retreading my old path.
Perhaps I’ll gurgle from the depths I’ve sunk
and pour over the sides again
with greater flow than ever
for the perspective I’ve gained,
and my branches will spread like fingers
over this place, clutching
and grabbing it up with abandon,
creating new tributaries to feed my appetite.
Perhaps, my friend, but I cannot tell.
I did not foresee this bend, and
almost everything has changed, little bird,
save one thing only:
I am still your stream.
Come perch above and sing to me.
Come bathe in my clear and gentle waters.

Two little girls


Two little girls went out for a walk
in the chilly autumn air,
and they gathered handfuls of leaves as they talked,
and the leaves were as gold as their hair.
They followed the path that cut through the park
and wound with a slow little creek.
They never minded the frost on the bark
or the cold wind that bit at their cheeks.
They fed the ducks leaves from the withering trees,
but the ducks didn’t seem to care
I said with a sigh that ducks didn’t eat leaves,
but the girls only wanted to share.

Seasons

I measure myself in lines of poetry,
and some seasons I don’t amount to much.
If poems were leaves and I a tree,
I’d be a sorry, patchy thing,
full of bursting, sun-bleached buds
with a dry pile ready for the fire at my feet.
And a passer-by might ask himself
(or another with whom he wandered the yard)
if this blasted thing were a tree at all
or something only trying to be;
and should they cut me down and count my rings
they’d find me older than some sprouting trees
that blossom always in the early spring—
but though my rings be many and my leaves be few,
I mean to see this winter through.

Punks

We raced from porches to hedges,
dodging headlights as we ran,
laden with paper-filled packs,
and on the lookout for glowing doorbells.
Or sometimes we just wandered,
treading familiar paths
made mysterious now in damp darkness
and lit sporadically by the fading stars
and the neon promise of Main Street.
Yellow sentinels on the corners
were the spotlights of our fantasies
and the guard towers of our prisons.
Our future seemed brighter
when our other concerns had gone to bed.
Our music was the rhythm
to which we lived our lives and
a curfew was a challenge that we answered
with white unraveling spools of angst.

Swing Set – (as published in Southern Quill)

It’s a brisk morning,
the kind that only comes on the cusp of spring
where the sun is high and warm and
burns the frost off the greening grass
but hasn’t yet burned it from the air.
“It’s cold,” I tell her as I go out.
She pushes hard on the screen door
and steps barefoot onto the concrete,
holding her arms up toward me
and trying to dance away the cold.
She’s still in her shrinking, mismatched PJs.
There’s a hole in her left pant leg.
“Get me get me!”
I pick her up and carry her with me to the shed,
showing her how the latch on the fence works,
letting her open it when we come back through.
“Daddy, what dat?”
She points at the swing set.
We found it on a yard sale page,
dog-chewed and sun-stained
and free.
I scavenged and swapped out parts for her,
but winter hasn’t let her play on it yet.
“That’s your new swing set. Wanna try it out?”
“Yeah!”
I put her on the see-saw.
“Hold on tight, sweetheart.”
I push her as the wind blows.
The sunlight bleaches her hair,
and her laughter mingles with the bird songs.
Tomorrow is the Equinox, but
for me it’s spring already.

Untitled – May 4, 2016

It was years ago, but I smell you sometimes
usually on another woman,
and everything stops for an instant.
It’s not when you introduced me to Jones Soda
the excited confusion when you told me you were bisexual
or the depression when you friend-zoned me—
I remember those things too, of course,
but not when I smell you.
When I smell you I’m passing a note in shop class
talking to you on the the phone for five hours,
switching out the cordless when the battery ran out
telling you I’d never been kissed
watching Ashlee Simpson try to lip sync on SNL
walking out afterwards in the rain to meet you
on the corner under the lamp-post
holding hands stepping over writhing worms
(out in the rain for the same reasons we were)
cuddling for warmth under a park pavilion
and the electric taste of my first kiss
to the tune of “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers.

If I Get Alzheimer’s

If I get Alzheimer’s,
I think I’d like to die
before it goes to far.

I think I’d like to leave my family
knowing who I am
and knowing who they are.

I think I’d like my mind to die with me
Instead of going bit by bit—
a memory here, a loved one there…

Either way, I guess, it’s me that’s dying;
for who am I without experience?
Still, I think I’d like all of me to go at once.

Then again,
I say “I think” because
I may not want to die.

I’d hate to write my life away and
then retain enough of myself
to want whatever time is left

only to have it taken from me
because of some paper I signed—
or a poem I wrote when I was 25.

On Bringing My Daughter to College

This part of my life has always been separate.
Everyday I leave our house behind;
I drive these roads
and walk these paths
alone,
and my two worlds
have never intersected.
Until today.

My time on campus 
has always been about learning
and living dreams,
so it’s funny that it took you 
coming to school with me to teach me
how much of my dreams are already here
in you.