Category: Poetry

Pages in a journal

Leaves, yellowed and browned
in the cold winds
after a hot, dry summer,
cling to grayed, shivering twigs
that point skyward,
like the splayed fingers
of cracked and crooked wizards
summing stormclouds.

Raindrops slice down,
heavy and hard, soaking in
until the desperate branches sag
and the leaves tear off
one by one
to drop to the ground
where they will decay,
leaving behind an emptiness
where one day
the brightness of hope
will bring forth new buds
nourished by
the quiet tears of winter.

Weightlessness

When all the burdens
are cut loose
and you rise
past the thunderheads
beyond the crowded cacophony
of overworked satellites
into the peaceful silence
of weightless space
you will find me
waiting to wrap you
like a sun-warmed blanket

There
we will float
together in the void
the only sound
our slow breath
the only weight
our bodies
pressing into each other

our only view
the entirety of creation.

 

“Your heart,” she told me, when we walked the pier and watched the lobstermen pulling up their pots at the far end of the dark bay, after that clouded talk in the coffee shop, when we both kept sipping at long-empty cups and looking at everything but each other…

“Your heart,” she told me, “has unlimited capacity.”

“You’ve told me this before,” I replied, remembering a drive in the Florida sun in a rented convertible, when I backtracked ten miles to retrieve the hat that had blown off her head on the interstate.

She was young, then, and I was… idealistic. Impressionable. Eager to be anything that she told me to be.

Her answer came like the sharp mist off the whitecaps, chilling under my upturned collar.

“I was wrong, then.”

“But–”

“Then, I thought you had a heart with enough room for everyone. A big heart. A heart like a balloon that could never pop, no matter how many people blew into it.”

I found her analogy lacking, but it had potential. I kept silent and waited, like the gathering clouds drifting along with us, far overhead.

“But my analogy doesn’t really hold water,” she mused, and I saw in her tight cheeks and quivering nose the telltale signs of a joke she knew no one else would understand.

“Your heart,” she told me, pausing to lean on a thick pole as a boat chugged past, wheezing white smoke behind…

“Your heart is more like a bucket with a hole in it. People pour their love in, and maybe it gathers for a bit, but it runs out just as quickly.”

Seagulls bobbed in the wake of the little lobster boat, facing various directions, as the twilight crept in around us and the chill of dusk oozed under my collar and raindrops began to patter on the mottled wood of the decking, drumming dully on the plastic lid of my long-empty coffee cup.

winter begins

Tissue paper crinkles under the bed
waiting for Valentine’s Day
or an anniversary
wrinkled and flattened
over and over again
stuffed into gift bags
to decorate a mid-range Pinot
or add substance to the emptiness
left unfilled by a gift card.

I used to wrap gifts
with the Sunday comics
or sliced-up grocery bags
when presents held the magic
signaled by another candle on the cake
or cookie crumbs left by a fireplace
on a twinkling December night.

Now in a dusky twilight
the restless cats rustle under the bed
in the forgotten tissue paper
with fraying edges and fading colors
wrinkled and flattened
over and over again
waiting to be dragged out
for one more anniversary
or one more Valentine’s Day.

Coming Clean

Through the wash
Soaked and spun
Squeezed, wrung, and hung
Dripping out clear water
Like blood cheated of its color
To seep into the ground
And disappear
Into a muddy past

How many more washes
Until the tired cloth
Disintegrates on a pale wind

Better, perhaps, to let
The grime of years accumulate
And maintain the illusion
Of substance

 

Denial

We turn back our clocks
unwinding
an hour of summer
in a futile attempt
to legislate autumn
into the future.
One more hour of summer,
as if daylight could be saved
like dollars
until the hours accumulate
into days, and the days
into months, until
we have cheated winter
of its cold-hearted
intentions.

But leaves turn brown
and our pace slows
and fog infiltrates,
dimming our bright thoughts
and chilling our fingertips.

Inevitability
insists itself
on our futures,
on our present,
and the irresistible rise
from summer
to autumn
to winter
will, inevitably, be met
by the folly
of our belief
that we can stop it.

 

Almost

It was never about the coffee,
not for me.
A chill afternoon breeze
ghosted off the river
and up my sleeves,
numbing my fingers
wrapped tight
around an insufficient half-decaf.
You strolled perilously close to me,
our syncopated strides
reflecting the fractured rhythm
of a conversation
that bobbed and drifted
in the shallower, safer waters
of work and children.

My chilling arm shivered
with the memory of
a San Francisco night,
when a drugged-up homeless guy
frightened you so much
that you clenched my arm
tight against your side
all the way up Market Street.
I slowed my stride
so we strolled together
at an almost–
almost–
scandalous pace.

We parted at the elevator,
and all the train ride home
I wondered if I would have
accepted the invitation
we both knew you couldn’t make.

Now in the bar next to gate B-7,
I gaze into the glare
of an emptied whisky glass,
its curved bottom refracting
my thoughts in the sharp
afternoon sunlight,
like the wineglass
on that San Francisco night,
when we talked over dinner
about office politics
and your autistic son
and my depressed daughter
and everything acceptable.

It was never about the wine, not for me.
And it wasn’t about the coffee this afternoon.

It never was.