I Sing the song of my father

I Sing the song of my father *

I sing the song of my father

every particle of my being

today infused with him as

though he stands beside me

and has never left – though

he did vanish one hot

August morning - sunlight

burning through white

coverlets – though I felt

His heart beat three times

Once – Twice – Thrice

under my palm and

then stop – he did not die

I sing the song of my father

Who left with black hair

glinted with silver in his

Sixtieth year – slipped from

any coil mortal or otherwise

but for the coil that holds my

heart pounding my soul still –

I sing the song of my father

He turned my head to

the first cloud in my first

sky - to the wind in the shimmer

of sun filigreed leaves to the

sea rippling – as he drifted sand

through fingers and we sat

Together watching a tiny flag

on the top of a curlicued  

Castle tilt and fall into the

Onrushing tide. 

I sing the song of my father

In the eyes of all who work hard

and deserve respect and those

who cannot find work through

limitation or exclusion.  In the

wonder of all that sprang natural

and all that rose from the mind

of men and women –

I sing

The song of my father who turned

my face to cobalt and burnt sienna

the shock of turpentine on a clear

morning a blank canvas holding all

possibility. 

I sing the song of my father

in the crabs that poked from

the mud on the day on the pier

while he painted and the sun

began to slip below gilding all

In that silent sacred place to

Which he granted me entrance.

I sing the song of my father – to

Sun burnt ribs that rippled under

Young flesh – to his ebony hair

To the taste of salt on his young

Flesh as he carried me far out

Into the sea. 

I sing the song of my father

to that crinkle nose secret

smile he passed to my mother

as they sang from song-sheets

To his eyes closed in ecstasy as

Music shook the walls around

and I peeked from my own

encouraged experience to see

A tear trailing at crescendo

I sing the song of my father as

I feel his hand in mine strong

Ever present – singing in the

Shimmer of leaves in a willow

Rustling in chestnut blossoms

Soaring on the velvet tip of

A blued jay on a clear day

Returning caw for call

I sing the song of my father

As he stood watching my ride

On a carousel light slanting

Through high window – calliope

Playing waiting for me with

Open arms to jump – I jump

I sing – the song of my father

Holding my newborn son

in aquamarine waters high

above his head – diamond

droplets falling about them

I sing the song of my father

Coffee cups before us

Words flying as red cardinals

soaring from- between –above

I sing the song of my father

I sing in memory, in reflection

In honor, in dedication and

In love – I feel his presence in

the air that brushes my cheek

In every particle of my being

and though I thought it a wonder

that he left when his hair was

mostly black and his back straight

when he could bend and rise

From the earth of his gardens hands

rich with fragrant loam – Left still

young enough

I see him now – hair white –

The slightest stoop as he stands

Shining in the blaze of sun

Beams shooting dancing rays

For it is from

His lips - I sing his song

Forever with the life he

Lent to me.

published in Bards Annual Anthology 

the ketchup wars

the ketchup wars 

whooping warriors of bloodless pretend wars

we ran, mugging fierce faces at each other as

we fell, graceless as bowling pins in faked suffering

the kind seen in the silence of marble chilled cinemas 

the kind of ketchup killing 

where rugged men rode ranges of firing rifles

stuffed with celluloid splendor of grace and always 

always lived to ride home with clean hands 

to some sweet lady holding her hair off her face

and their cows safe in the fence she had fixed 

SCISSORS AND SPACKLE 

Cat on windowsill - A Haiku

Cat on windowsill 

Folding boneless in sunlight

Origami breathes

HAIKU JOURNAL 5-29-12 

Girls in Plum Sweaters

Girls in Plum Sweaters 

what can girls in plum sweaters

be expected to know of loss

as they pass the shovel among friends

unorated letters on pretty stationary drift

in the wind - as earth hard-hits the coffin

inside sweatered pruning friend on white satin

outside they, fresh as dropped stitches 

from a single skein of yarn

creating a forever hole

in matching plum sweaters,

dirt under fingernails

cold wind in their fresh washed  hair

Burningword 

Red Dust

Red Dust

On the steps behind the garden gate he sat, 

small dark eyed boy 

compact and steely as a newly minted dart 

coiled in the exile of his mother’s dubious fear. 

Outside others shouted, kicked unseen stones 

in the red baked earth – 

he watched as billows of joy drifted through the latch 

until a boy chasing a soccer ball came to the gate and  

waved him on - petulant, dubious, rebellion puffed his

sparrowed chest and dark eyes dancing he quickly 

lifted the latch and ran onto the red rousted dust 

as fuses sprang and all was glinting metallic,  

a boy arm, a shower of red rock, a sneakered foot,

that soccer ball, all collateral damage,

scar on the land – 

this now gone boy 

once safe behind the grated gate 

now mixing

with the red dust.

 New Myth  5-29-12 

In the center of the eye

In the center of the eye

In the center

of the eye

that can no longer

hold

fragile sense of certitude in

nothing beyond Now

Crescendoed crash

light smash

shifts all in shades of shimmered

cerulean

tide pulls

tremulous tempestuous

insistent

irrevocable

Tomorrow.

Indio Rising - 6/19/12

Papa’s Box

Papa’s Box

Mandated for centuries a plain pine box

raw wood unadorned slipping easily

into the earth from whence he came

But Papa loved mahogany

spent lemon scented Sundays

oiling the whirls in the towering breakfront

the cornered Victrola on its own fringed carpet,

the twin side-tables at which he knelt to polish each

claw footed toe in turn with his white cheesecloth

and soft sable mustache brushes

In the soft late afternoon Sunday light

glowing golden he’d smile at the gentle shimmered

sheen of his burnished mahogany

and so – when it was time – there in place

of that mandated raw pine was Papa slipped

into the earth in solid mahogany shining

as his smile lowered into the soft earth of

that final Sunday a scent of lemon oil drifted

a filament of pure white cheesecloth lifted into the air 

*scissors and spackle 8-23-12)   

I am haunted

I am haunted

by the tumbled toss

of cosmic die that

flung my speck of

soul “here and now”

full bellied and free

rather than there and

who knows when –

burkaed, beaten,

starving, perhaps an

ash blowing in wind –

cosmic toss of good

fortune – haunted by

echoes of the others

beseeching bloated

arrogant far too for-

tunate-to-do-nothing

me – I stumble on in

too much good inten-

tion and far too little

action -this languid

legacy of legions of

“there but for some

grace go I” haunted

by unearned privilege

BARDS ANNUAL ANTHOLOGY 2018 

Away from home in my own skin - a prose piece for Poets United Sunday Pantry

Breasts. Yearned for as a tiny girl and then, and then, they came seemingly overnight. Breasts had power over my life, like some slutty cousins who come unexpectedly to stay with you and end up following you wherever you go and leaving you with their bad reputation. For, as everyone knows, or should, girls with big breasts do have reputations, whether they have earned them or not.  Reputations, that are created behind bathroom doors, mostly by adolescent boys who want to get their hands on “them” and less often, but frequently, by girls who would just as soon rip them off for their own if they only could. They boys, I knew at thirteen, would gather in clumps around the water fountain in the hallway at school or more disturbingly after school in front of Joe’s Pizza Palace in the shopping center, thumping each other on the arm and nodding as though they all had some secret knowledge about me. When you’re a girl with big breasts you can either go with all of this, or retreat.  I favored retreat – under voluminously big shirts and after school days at home after homework, down in our cool, damp basement, curled up in a soft old velvet armchair that had been my grandfathers, sipping iced coffee which I considered very sophisticated and reading a Russian novel which I knew was. Sometimes, I’d cry into that tall tumbler of iced coffee, the glass pressed tightly against those two treasonous mounds – sometimes I’d convince myself it was the Russian heroine who was throwing herself under train tracks or some such drama, though I knew.  I knew. It all seemed quite dismal until I met Jerome Fitzmaurice in Problems In Democracy, and everything changed.   (298 words) 

in short ...

in short ...

when in the course of human events 

ringing - this chime of a line, that sign 

of a time that still holds within the melt

of time, the groan of time, the shimmer

oath of time, in each heart beat then, now

and ever that looked over the horizon to a

time, a chime a sign, over the water and be-

yond a rainbow where all would find in the

course of human events a place, a purpose 

a vision of life, liberty and the unfettered 

pursuit of happiness…that chime of a line

crystalline, perfect ringing - sometimes so

soft one needs to strain to hear the sound, 

othertimes pounding with purpose, passion

and the urgent push of now . When?

In the course of human events, 

it becomes necessary…