A Sampling of Poetry

HOMEMADE, 1939
for Aunt Jan, ninety-seven

Midwestern, true, and from the thirties,
even a grown daughter and her father
with wire-rimmed glasses and bib overalls –
but this photograph is no American Gothic.

No tight dour faces, framed in carpenter gothic,
no vertical board-and-batten siding, arched
gable window, no backdrop of perfect trees
from the woodland of sacred shapes.

Just a black and white snapshot with border,
brother and sister close but not touching,
their father, a body's width to the right,
standing in front of overgrown apple trees,

real trees, real men, farmers, at home in their bodies,
sleeves rolled up for the heat of the day. Center stage
this eighteen-year-old poses in her taffeta black gown --
lace inset on the bodice, rhinestone spaghetti straps,

not for church, not for the farm, not for the town –
and smiles, pleased, 4-H proud, modeling her dress,
her hair, her dream, gazing out to somewhere,
singing and dancing all the way to New York,

the same year Judy sang Over the Rainbow.

The Tipton Poetry Journal, Issue 60, Spring 2024

THE CANE

I did not want to use a crook-topped cane.
A walking stick, chopped from my back yard,
was better, rough and manly, tall and hard,
fit for climbing mountains, straightening pain.
And yet, increasingly on evening walks
I took the cane in hand, and with my wife
tread lightly on my pride for coupled life,
curved companionship, and simple talk.
I seldom think about my cane today
unless it hides behind a chair or door,
or throws a tantrum falling to the floor,
or runs away in a child's hand to play.
It's me and not me, this bent shepherd's staff,
chipped, worn, stable, strong, not my autograph.

The Healing Muse, Vol 10, Number 1, 2019

HEARTLAND
Remember me to one who lives there
Bob Dylan

“The girl from the end of the lake,” that’s what my dad,
at ninety-seven, named her, my new love, when I mentioned
she grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, the north country for sure,
Zimmerman’s town. It pleased him that she was from there –
an honest place meant a good person – and he had worked
the neighboring shores of the U.P. after the war, small parishes
in fishing villages, and I was born there, so it all fit,

sort of. Those lakes, great as the heartland he loved,
where “the farm boy from Ohio” had married “the girl from Kansas,”
titles he bestowed with pride to tell his story,
to fix names fading at summer’s end.

All good, except that true love of mine is no Dylan girl,
make no mistake – she’s freer than any howlin’ wind,
stronger than the snowflakes storm, and loves,
loves more deeply than any northland lake.

The First Literary Review, -- East, March-April, 2025
On Line: http://www.rulrul.4mg.com/

INVOCATION

dear earth,
teach us to stand
like trees--

offering shade
like the oak
on a summer day,

pointing to the sky
like the spruce
to lift the spirit,

touching leaves to the ground
like the willow
to connect when lost,

making risky moves
like the birch
when too complacent,

celebrating change
like the sugar maple
turning crazy yellow-orange,

dancing en pointe
like the coconut palm
to tender a glimpse of grace.

The Unitarian Universalist World, VOL 32, NO 4, 2018

APPENDECTOMY

It's so good to get my body back, like climbing
into the old Camry, knowing I will get there and back.

Hard when it's in for repair. They don't give you a loaner –
wouldn't handle right in any case, so you must make do,
laze about, play solitaire on the cell phone,
veg on the Red Sox, okay stuff but not the real thing,
any more than you can roll without wheels.

Not to romanticize bodies, we all know they can be a pain
in the kidneys, and they need regular servicing, washing,
and they finally wear out.

But when you get yours back, it's so good, like I said,
you just want to get in and drive away.

The Connecticut River Review. 2019

WHOSE WOODS
for Louie, October 2022

He was slumped over in his wheelchair when I arrived,
belted in, reading a large book nestled in his left arm,
his fisted hand holding the corner.

Looking up, he frowned, then smiled when I unmasked,
and greeted me with words I could not hear. Sitting close,
I told him of my day, then shared two poems,
and he came alive, pointing to the bedside table,
his hand trembling, where I found a worn Frost,
and read aloud, "I'm going out to clear the pasture spring,"
always a good place to start.

I passed the book to him, and he reclaimed his reading
glasses, turned the pages slowly, until he stopped,
looked up, his snow-whiskered face shaking, nodding,
and read, attending to each word, each phrase,
and I could hear nothing but the rhythms of his breath,
the sweep of easy wind and downy flake, until the end,
and he looked up again with the joy and wonder
that belie sleep.

Northern New England Review, Vol. 43, 2023

HOW TO SELF-ISOLATE
- stay at home, in a room with a window you can open
Health Service, Ireland (https://www2.hse.ie)

For now, this window, bench, and tree will do,
will have to do: the bench, three stories down
across the street, sitting on the corner, not much
of a bench -- like an overbuilt coffee table.

There are other benches, better,
with backs, curved arms and legs, along the sidewalk
to the north: two seat toward the pond, another,
west across Clew Bay to Croagh Patrick,
where I sat and drew the holy mountain,
early morning, days ago, waiting for folks
to finish breakfast,

and to the east, one fronting
Quay Street, the warehouses, repurposed to shops,
cafes, apartments; two others attending the park
and little pond, one with a memorial:

Greg Walker, Scottish Angler
Who fished these waters for forty years
"Great Fishing with Great People"

Few stop at the corner bench: that older man,
his road bike with panniers, all in black
tight clothes, who sat and checked his phone --
how far had he traveled?

The young woman
in a cotton dress with long dark-brown hair
that she twisted with her finger as she lingered,
then flicked over her shoulder, stood, faced
the bench, stretched like a runner, placing one foot,
then the other on the bench, leaning forward,
flexing, kneeling each time; then stood on tiptoe,
her back straight, and walked off.

Behind the bench,
some twenty feet, the modest tree, a child catcher,
perfect for little ones who climb there,
the knobby roots like a stepstool,
thin low branches, fit for small hands;
and the trunk, leaning, curving
the whole tree, bowing to the east, away
from Atlantic winds, like a saint with a hand,
palm open, fingers branching upward,
with leaves shielding the wind, the light rain,
and the boy sheltering there,
almost invisible, until two other boys
appear with a ball, and he jumps down,
and they run off, passing it back and forth
on the wet grass.

The Naugatuck Review, Issue 30, 2023.

IMPERIAL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

On this grey day
flat as the horizon,
it is the migrant home
that takes you in –

not the handsome father,
holding his swaddled baby,
or his old coupe, or the wash tub,
or the picking basket, even the boots,

soles up on the bench, suggesting
a body being eaten by the earth
like a Bosch painting. No, it is
the hut: its front like a crazy quilt

stitched together from pieces of
cardboard, fruit boxes, wood crates,
fragments of tar paper . . . so small
only stoop labor could enter,

with that little girl, hugging
the door frame, who
you finally see in
the black opening.

Ekphrastic poem after Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965), “Mexican Field Worker’s Home,” 1937. Library of Congress: Lange, Mexican Field Worker's Home.

Bicoastal Review,, Number 4, 2024. bicoastalreview.com

THE SHEET
The cool that came off sheets just off the line
Seamus Heaney, “Clearances”

My father taught me how the cotton line
we used to trim the sail was called a sheet.
The lateen sail was canvas, not linen –
its delta shape held true by well-sewn hems.
Close to the wind the sail luffed and shook
like sheets upon a line. A cross-wind
bowed the sail, the undulating canoe thwacking
water in the bow; the sheet, taught in hand.
Such innocence, like nothing had happened,
the leeboards down, just skimming, happening
down the lake, attentive to the touch and go
of shifting winds, waves – no holding back.
We sailed that day, this way and that – O
thinking not how lives come about and tack.

The Road Not Taken -- A Journal of Formal Poetry, Spring 2025.
On Line: https://journalformalpoetry.com/archive/2025/TheRoadNotTakenSpring2025.pdf