riding our bikes past horse farms
with billboards proclaiming
DANCERS IMAGE
WINNER 1968
KENTUCKY DERBY
the sun-soaked pavement
radiating heat up through
my orbiting feet and legs
matching your pace (a fast
pace, you were a cross country
champ, fitter than me by half)
you threw your head back and
cackled as foals whinnied in
our wakes, calling us to stop
for them with a carrot or an
apple, but today we had neither
it was our first ride that summer
pen pals all year, kept apart by
school, what else? sacrifice our
fall winter spring to our futures
i could have visited you i suppose
exeter was one town over, but
i was a townie, you were a scholar
honors french at a prep school
i was lucky mine taught calculus
we sent emails daily, maybe weekly
when thing got busy (which was
often, and sometimes monthly
during finals, and big papers)
always talking love and romance
never between one another, no
that option always foreclosed by
your on-again-off-again and
my serial monogamy and once
i told you, this time i think it’s
for real and you said “how do you
know what’s real, you’re sixteen”
(after all i was right, you never met)
still furiously peddling, working our
way up the gently sloping hill, horse
farms turning to marshland, reeds
and low grass and mud washed with
the outgoing tide, clear skies meeting
a stand of pines where the ground
rose higher, the salt now overwhelming
omnipresent and variegated amongst
sea and sweat and marsh and the
roadside gravel kicking up under tires
you pushed hard to the top, and i
was way behind you, staring mouth
agape at your ass and thighs, you grinned
back mocking and seeing me down the hill
you slowed a bit, conscious of my labored
huffing and puffing, and now cresting
the hill where the sky and the sea,
split by a thin horizon dividing shades
of azure and teal and emerald and jade,
came into view beneath the steep head
turning north, tires paralleling sea wall
we raced the gannets gulls auks terns
pushing twenty five now, so said my
brand new bike computer (thanks grandma)
“i don’t worry how fast i’m going, i just
push as hard as i can” a typical jibe from you
passing lobster stands and the surf club
and the state beach full of mass plates
we scowled at rhodies massholes mainers
retirees beach bums surf bros townies
the harbor with bobbing trawlers’ nets
hung aloft to dry in the sun, lobster traps
towering stacks bedside piles of buoys
at the point we rolled our bikes across
the lawn, past the parking lot, you shaking
your frizzed curls in the onshore breeze
me trying to pretend like i didn’t notice
your golden skin glistening with sweat
and how your quadriceps filled out
your bright white bike shorts, now
scrambling down the rocks, we’d come
halfway between high and low, sea ebbing,
dozens of tide pools filled with mollusks
and snails and hermits and tiny minnows
no longer than the tip of your pinky’s nail
plucking some or other aquatic creature
i held out my hands and you dropped in it
a crab skittering back and forth between my
cupped palms and when i looked up you
were staring past me at a rocky outcrop
covered in bird shit and cormorants who
one by one dove without hesitation
to fetch some fish or perhaps for fun
your hand on the rocks was licked by
the indolent waves swaying between the
crevices and i thought of drifting my
fingers across yours and why i didn’t
i’m not sure but when i looked back up
you were staring at me and now your
eyes softened with your smile and i
wondered how many more days like this
we’d get before we rode home to our
diverging futures, drifting apart like
hermit crabs in a rising spring tide
the charles river on tuesday january 28th 2025
you walk the left bank of the quinobequin
windswept cold winter sun low in the south
reflecting on the river it lightens your step
just visible with a rightward glance
scratching the cornea when you look
at rippling scattering sparkling shine
wide open at the mouth beckoning
mighty! named by a half-french king
now meandering back toward itself
its source in some obscure pond
in a fenced suburban backyard
only twenty five miles away
today i became water and
let bufflehead bellows echo across me
let me freeze over to certainly thaw
let me crash ahead with great fortitude
and now lose my nerve and turn about
but always always inexorably onward
(fractalizing infinities notwithstanding)
to merge myself forever to the sea
friday prayer
quiet
do you hear that
complicity and corruption
secret police security details
do you quite hear that
bribes and bailouts
war crimes and walls
hussars and hooah
i hear it
"we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
british war planes american bombs
water treatment plants and schools
"we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
a plume of smoke against cliffs and wadis
sanaa naked and nestled in the plains
"we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
here is defiance here is "no"
here are victors in streets
on fridays every friday
"we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
what we would not say they said
what we would not risk they risked
rejoicing at every bomb dropped on them
means not a bomb dropped on palestine
”we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
subjugated
"we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
obliterated
"we don't care make it a world war
we don't care make it a world war"
liberated
poem for ceasefire
glory to god
unitary god
god of all things "great and small"
god of whitman of channing
of haniyeh of sinwar
god who hums in your head
from somewhere back in the hippocampus
as you drive down the freeway
god of mothers and children
of lovers and poets
of warriors and martyrs
blesséd are the peacemakers
said god-as-man
glory to god
god is good
god is great!
glory to god in all things
glory to god
in all all all all things
poem for december second
i miss the sun these days
by two o’clock it begins its
long low languorous roll
shadows stretching endless
flicking one by one to the horizon
before the descending dusk
the birds have gone these days
not all or even most but
the cormorants and kingfishers
sandpipers and seagulls
not least of all the heron
who stalks and stakes the fish
until there are no more
flown away to propitious marshes
oblivious to my observing
(i take my rhythm from him
and though i pass the weir
near daily i neatly avert
my eyes from his barren
fishing hole preferring
my memory until
he returns again
with the running herring)
soon, maybe sooner
with luck or poor weather
a few good hard frosts
a feast of flurries will
fill my open mouth and
cover the crackling leaves
bury the dead sticks and
then there will be some peace
again as i wait for my future in
the melt and muck and mud
for now the end is beyond sight
the days shorten
hastening toward their nadir
tumbling down pouring out
flooding their dark across and
over leaving their ink stains on
my back and under my eyes
i would wash myself in meltwater
if snow would ever fall but for now
it’s even before the freeze that thaws
and all there is to do is wait for icy
winds to whip my hair into tomorrow
granddad 1935-2022
I've been thinking
of Grandad
More than usual
these days
(You might imagine)
These days
When I see my hand
clasping my daughter's
I see my Grandad's hand
Clasping mine
The day he went home
For the last time
Sitting across the table
One night in August
He seemed to know
something
I didn't
Now I know what it was
When I saw his photos
(pages of slides)
I was astonished
But I knew already
what I would find
I never asked
What they were
to him
But I saw the camera
Always in his hand
It was another
of those things
he turned to
That I turn to
When I push
the shutter
or the pedal
I'm grateful
He watched me
grow up
We saw each other
Young and old
One who'd made
mistakes
And one who will
Like his riders
The one's who'd
been down
The one's who're
going down
(As he used to say)
He sent me
a note
Not long before
he died
Offering an ear
When I was in a
rough patch
I'll say now
What I couldn't then
It isn't easy
I'm glad you're here
You've been there
That makes it
easier
I miss you
to my daughter
to my daughter on the first day
the evening after
the afternoon the
first time i saw your face
(echolocated sound transformed
3D model liquid crystal display
electromagnetic radiation retina
optical nerve occipital lobe)
i saw a rabbit
gently pass
on the walk to the supermarket
small eyes reflecting taillights
of toyotas
the morning i first saw your face
(flesh reflected star’s light)
gurgling blue
spitting old
suckling new
your mother bit my knuckle and said
i can’t believe it
three quarters orbit’s dream
four minutes passed
from head pressed out past sacrum
to arms and legs heaving push
to catch (i catch) and release
to waiting mother hands and knees
the morning afternoon evening
i last see your face
(radiant heat child’s gaze)
what i will see
daughter mother grandmother
a planted tree by
headstone with ancestral name
(your name)
tall and proud
bending in breeze
somehow i trust
it’s not for me
to say what i see
to my daughter on the second day
soft hiccoughs to soundly sleep
under climate control sheets
how many weeks of every day this
each glance another face with
nose slightly misplaced or
perhaps just misremembered
what forces conspire to so arrange us
what unseen fingers push
sharply notched brow
what spiders’ silks
attached to distant nodes
pulled us in these
briefly intersecting curves
my mother’s hands like her mother
(who would have loved you)
now holding you like she held me
ensconced in
kitchen counter casserole dish
steady patter in out hic in out
unperturbed by outside turning
just these small fists
shallow breaths and
millimeters between us
what have i done
to make you trust me so
what do i do to earn this
to my daughter on the third day
dawn sunlight trickles through
(or maybe evening golden?)
curtains porous muslin while
alarm stirs for fourteenth? fifteenth?
time in twice so many hours
tired and thankful
feet gently intertwining
mother and father
rise to begin again
swaddle a baptismal gown for
ritual carried out in
one hundred fifty minute intervals
wake, rise, hold, feed
wake, rise, hold, repeat
joyous work of
nimble hands and breasts
practiced and true
unearthing something buried in
piecework carving out some
lost sepulcher
monument to long dead
embodied in child new
parting kiss at last rites
bid a fast farewell
from the other room they
patiently wait for the
next expedition to
unwrap some holy relic
breakfast table
(maybe supper?)
mother and father
heaving cry so
fleeting few how
many more
chances to try
to my daughter on the fourth day
grasping tiny hominid
simian feet pressed to chest
resting thermoregulating
pieces of me
occluded once through fashion
now make sense
how did ergaster feel
dropping acheulean axe to
split flint finely fire from stone
did she know that she would
not much after
rend unholy energy from
falling fastly metal fixture
cleaving unitary one to
triune infernal heat below
who is this looks through me
reflected shop windows prepare for day
who is incident to your eyes
peering flatly from
slung dangling carefully
fontanel to face held warmly
while bounty wrapped in polymerase
rots and never dies
how did heidelbergensis feel
primate to european earth
what great urge
compelled lonely colony
did she know that she would
not much after
rob her mother to
spread her tendrils further still
waking baleful yet smiling wide
grasping glands unmade but
perfect for your size
no one taught you
instincts earned through eons of
malnourished children left to die
great event of gaseous oxidant
blue green thanatos to most but
spiracles rely on this expansive soup
dining on uncounted dead
fecund slop who
yearning to live
nearly forever
pulled this wet rock asunder
to my daughter on the fifth day
scattered architecture screaming skyward
wordlessly worming our way
past birch groves and endless warrens
what fresh eyes you have and
ears to hear the murmuring words
spoken by creatures demur and obscured
teach me what i already know but
can’t don’t won’t remember
that the robin and the caterpillar
that the squirming worm
that the primped poodle
that the wandering tern
can’t don’t won’t be
seen by eyes closed
i have been here
made my peace and compromised
sacrificed
whirling whirling
and you
unfolding unfurling
each tiny finger wrapped on mine
new muscles wefted learning
what have you opened in me
what gift you can’t comprehend
though scarcely can i
mothers and mothers
and fathers and fathers
to one another
whisper hosannas
you pass up to me
hearty handfuls
smile and noise the
soil and the asteroid
comets’ tails and solenoids
a world to be newly seen
i have been here before
you may return again
so i give you what i can but
ask that you take only
what will not weigh you down
to my daughter on the sixth day
i dreamt you spoke to me
whispered words over
evening sounds of
alveolar gasp and
shuttling bus and
mechanical whir
what would you speak to me?
speak of closing world?
death vacillating languid and fierce?
speak of promise fresh?
hope perched distant and obscured?
speak of mother’s love?
nipple doting tender and full?
then in the dream
a spring appeared
waterfall beyond
cave sequestered behind
what would we find?
hidden hydra, fangs bared?
gleaming treasure, fair and square?
stolid fortress, secret lair?
curiously into water we dove
glistening rocks beneath mottled sunlight
(as we crossed the pond)
making shapes
which we would later name for
birds we’d seen along the way
as we reached the entrance there
you moved your lips the
falling water
i could not hear
you cry, i wake
and yet
something deep beyond tugs
in the center of darkest milky way
gravitons plucking us even still
sympathetic vibrating vocal cords
musical mosaic of word unheard
what would you speak to me?
to my daughter on the seventh day
eyes frigid grey crashing blue like
warships patrol dying ocean
hair tufted hay fuzzed down like
sheep trod withering pasture
knuckles widely dance and
circle dart like
honeybees on ovary nectar
belly roundly protruding into
big world with mewing yawp
feet of platypus imaginings to
propel an egg into willing burrow
i have 27 years on you
my father has 30 on me
how long do we have together
let’s show us all we can
before we leave for now
i hope you trust those elders
who have given you reason to
trust
i hope you live these values
which have given you cause to
live
go
face a blinding light
envelop it with love
steal its heat away and
forge yourself
what we haven’t already
left for you