Mountain Climbing a River
The Hudson anoints our summer reflections
in sun-flecked currents. My son,
pointing to the river says, “Why,
does the water have mountains on it?”
I could cut those peaks down for him,
break them into waves hoisted by wind,
but I rather his mind leap and dance
through wakes of Everests.
Later he could revise the nature
of the succulents by the bed, tell me
how the smell of their dirt fertilizes
my sleep from the windowsill,
what will take root in my dreaming brain,
sprout into a creeping vine, twining
a green embrace for the sky’s orphans,
seed of what we are: questions
posing as answers. But I have aged
into the lustrous ache of this river,
a body of heavy churning, and wake
to the slowed currents of each morning,
blink sleep away, hope not to sink
before retrieving a small river stone
from the day’s cloudy flux, something to offer
my son, or his sister when she asks,
“Why does it seem like everything
is going somewhere?” And I could give
the world back to her imagination, where
it belongs, rather than tell her, “Because it is.”
(first published in Potomac Review, 60)
______________
Preparing to Grow
Days I walked crowded streets,
a sparrow in the ash tree
sang his light from the leaves,
then carried it out over the grasses
and into the reservoir, a preservation
of warmth in the still water.
From open storefronts, it sluiced
like a current of invitation, and how
we became a sanctuary for anyone
with a dream: women in hijab,
men in yarmulke, their children
laughing down the slides together.
Kennedy Boulevard’s traffic
ran its energy through my veins.
Jersey City’s parks—Pershing Field,
Leonard Gordon, Lincoln
and Liberty State—bristled
with maple trees, oak and birch.
Maps of heaven and its underworld
reflection, were traced in their roots
knuckled through the ground,
wriggling deeper than loam, down
past silt and clay, through granite hearts,
into the dirt and detritus of my bone.
These fingers worked me, a tillage
and fertilizing of my soil.
Sunlight seeped into the hayloft,
stored there as husk and pod, memory
of a thousand different futures.
Storm clouds massed like gray nests
woven into the east horizon. Then I woke,
to climb wooden towers, stairs winding
up arabesques inside an oak seed.
Now I stand on its carved terrace
reaching toward the first rain of history.
(first published in The Comstock Review, Fall/Winter 2017)
______________
High Dive
The diver’s toes grip gritty matting,
while balanced at the platform edge.
Moments before thrusting into flight,
when muscular tension in his calves
asserts their insight against the board,
the diver absorbs force as a kind of error.
His body vaults and arcs up into light.
Seeming to linger there, in that substance
of all possible outcomes, it’s mistaken for a mind.
But the drag of so much air resists
what’s implied. Pressure strains the limbs
as if gravity will correct the misconception.
Because the body follows rather than fights
the pull, debate is a logical fallacy. Head
tucks, hands grasp shins, shaping the idea.
The body spins to define its meaning
by muscles that calculate a geometry,
a path curving to reflect the diver’s thoughts
back to him from the surface below.
It’s how friction serves as another premise
in reaching toward something that is not
yet understood. The dive closes as the body
opens to embrace its entry. Hands stretch out
to make a point, slicing air and water down
to essentials. Inklings ripple in the changing,
until the thinker meets up with his image on the water,
in a mutually consuming comprehension. There
they disappear below the surface, closing over
its initial error and articulating a splash
which the audience judges to be its best explanation.
(first published in Cimarron Review, Winter 2017, issue 198)
______________
The Mind of a Poet with a Corporate Job
The sparrows perched at each corner of the walk to work
were more beautiful than this e-mail for the regional managers.
Although it’s true, they were less urgent, didn’t have anywhere
they had to be. Maybe that’s what they sang about.
It’s like this moment late in the day when sunlight
slices through the office windows. It reminds me
what I meant by insight in the language of particulars,
so now I can make that photocopy of your report.
Besides, the light and what it brought, already slips away.
I’ll soon forget to write it down and with it, I’ll forget too
how elegant the trees were bowed to the ancient wind
and what their aching branches suggested.
Something flies off just then, and somewhere
I have a long note like a memo
addressed to the spirit that hungers in us all.
I think it got stuck to an invoice mailed to a client
who should be sending payment within the month.
(first published in Main Street Rag, Fall 2015)
______________
Evidence of Things Unseen
At first a scratch behind the wall.
Swelling pipes? Then
streamers of insulation
behind the toilet, frayed
carpet threads near baseboard molding.
Refresh the traps, clean out
the old peanut butter bait,
green and hard in the bowls.
Rats take days to grow comfortable
with changes in the room.
But on a rainy night,
when there’s little to feed on, a snap
in the dark. In the morning, I find
the limp, mud-colored
body of our suspicions.
There’s relief, an easing of defenses,
but always less than we hope for.
More evidence leaks into the day,
seeps into the streets until I hear
a scratch behind everything:
the pavement, the stalled air settling
around the grape hyacinth, the dogwood
shading the corner, even the stop signs
that prevent nothing.
(first published in Word Fountain, Fall/Winter 2017)
______________
Poems on the Web
Flight Pattern
(Valparaiso Poetry Review, Fall/Winter 2018-2019)
Gossip
(The Cortland Review, Issue 73)
______________
Scrawl
(Fogged Clarity, No. 7, Spring 2011)
______________
Mulch Baptism
(MadHat Lit, February 2015)
The Hudson anoints our summer reflections
in sun-flecked currents. My son,
pointing to the river says, “Why,
does the water have mountains on it?”
I could cut those peaks down for him,
break them into waves hoisted by wind,
but I rather his mind leap and dance
through wakes of Everests.
Later he could revise the nature
of the succulents by the bed, tell me
how the smell of their dirt fertilizes
my sleep from the windowsill,
what will take root in my dreaming brain,
sprout into a creeping vine, twining
a green embrace for the sky’s orphans,
seed of what we are: questions
posing as answers. But I have aged
into the lustrous ache of this river,
a body of heavy churning, and wake
to the slowed currents of each morning,
blink sleep away, hope not to sink
before retrieving a small river stone
from the day’s cloudy flux, something to offer
my son, or his sister when she asks,
“Why does it seem like everything
is going somewhere?” And I could give
the world back to her imagination, where
it belongs, rather than tell her, “Because it is.”
(first published in Potomac Review, 60)
______________
Preparing to Grow
Days I walked crowded streets,
a sparrow in the ash tree
sang his light from the leaves,
then carried it out over the grasses
and into the reservoir, a preservation
of warmth in the still water.
From open storefronts, it sluiced
like a current of invitation, and how
we became a sanctuary for anyone
with a dream: women in hijab,
men in yarmulke, their children
laughing down the slides together.
Kennedy Boulevard’s traffic
ran its energy through my veins.
Jersey City’s parks—Pershing Field,
Leonard Gordon, Lincoln
and Liberty State—bristled
with maple trees, oak and birch.
Maps of heaven and its underworld
reflection, were traced in their roots
knuckled through the ground,
wriggling deeper than loam, down
past silt and clay, through granite hearts,
into the dirt and detritus of my bone.
These fingers worked me, a tillage
and fertilizing of my soil.
Sunlight seeped into the hayloft,
stored there as husk and pod, memory
of a thousand different futures.
Storm clouds massed like gray nests
woven into the east horizon. Then I woke,
to climb wooden towers, stairs winding
up arabesques inside an oak seed.
Now I stand on its carved terrace
reaching toward the first rain of history.
(first published in The Comstock Review, Fall/Winter 2017)
______________
High Dive
The diver’s toes grip gritty matting,
while balanced at the platform edge.
Moments before thrusting into flight,
when muscular tension in his calves
asserts their insight against the board,
the diver absorbs force as a kind of error.
His body vaults and arcs up into light.
Seeming to linger there, in that substance
of all possible outcomes, it’s mistaken for a mind.
But the drag of so much air resists
what’s implied. Pressure strains the limbs
as if gravity will correct the misconception.
Because the body follows rather than fights
the pull, debate is a logical fallacy. Head
tucks, hands grasp shins, shaping the idea.
The body spins to define its meaning
by muscles that calculate a geometry,
a path curving to reflect the diver’s thoughts
back to him from the surface below.
It’s how friction serves as another premise
in reaching toward something that is not
yet understood. The dive closes as the body
opens to embrace its entry. Hands stretch out
to make a point, slicing air and water down
to essentials. Inklings ripple in the changing,
until the thinker meets up with his image on the water,
in a mutually consuming comprehension. There
they disappear below the surface, closing over
its initial error and articulating a splash
which the audience judges to be its best explanation.
(first published in Cimarron Review, Winter 2017, issue 198)
______________
The Mind of a Poet with a Corporate Job
The sparrows perched at each corner of the walk to work
were more beautiful than this e-mail for the regional managers.
Although it’s true, they were less urgent, didn’t have anywhere
they had to be. Maybe that’s what they sang about.
It’s like this moment late in the day when sunlight
slices through the office windows. It reminds me
what I meant by insight in the language of particulars,
so now I can make that photocopy of your report.
Besides, the light and what it brought, already slips away.
I’ll soon forget to write it down and with it, I’ll forget too
how elegant the trees were bowed to the ancient wind
and what their aching branches suggested.
Something flies off just then, and somewhere
I have a long note like a memo
addressed to the spirit that hungers in us all.
I think it got stuck to an invoice mailed to a client
who should be sending payment within the month.
(first published in Main Street Rag, Fall 2015)
______________
Evidence of Things Unseen
At first a scratch behind the wall.
Swelling pipes? Then
streamers of insulation
behind the toilet, frayed
carpet threads near baseboard molding.
Refresh the traps, clean out
the old peanut butter bait,
green and hard in the bowls.
Rats take days to grow comfortable
with changes in the room.
But on a rainy night,
when there’s little to feed on, a snap
in the dark. In the morning, I find
the limp, mud-colored
body of our suspicions.
There’s relief, an easing of defenses,
but always less than we hope for.
More evidence leaks into the day,
seeps into the streets until I hear
a scratch behind everything:
the pavement, the stalled air settling
around the grape hyacinth, the dogwood
shading the corner, even the stop signs
that prevent nothing.
(first published in Word Fountain, Fall/Winter 2017)
______________
Poems on the Web
Flight Pattern
(Valparaiso Poetry Review, Fall/Winter 2018-2019)
Gossip
(The Cortland Review, Issue 73)
______________
Scrawl
(Fogged Clarity, No. 7, Spring 2011)
______________
Mulch Baptism
(MadHat Lit, February 2015)
