poem for heat waves and moving days

this lethargic melt as the sun beats my back
this suffocating stillness suffuses my pores
every breath is a sucking exhalation like
the atmosphere gags on chlorine fumes
the charles is low today with river rocks
once submerged under the swollen belly
now exposed and radiating toward perched
mallards who even with their rolling waters
seem to be panting dry heaving left and right

the exhaust from a passing city bus once an
unpleasant blast now nearly imperceptible
i catch a momentary reprieve under shadows
from few rustling flags over the town green
corner store air conditioner beckoning and i
step in for a beverage and some cigarettes as
a man with vineyard vines tote haggles with
the cashier over a five dollar bottle of wine

“enjoying the weather?” queries ironically
the woman on the bench at the trolley stop
finishing her joint and tossing the roach in
the gutter and coughing out a winsome grin
“trying to” swigging cerulean blue powerade
“more than i am” her reply across the wake
of bescrunchied jogger ambling between us

leaning on a fence by the weir i consider my
last day here in this place of slaughter and
refuge and exile and birth named for the
massachusetts a proud people and now
peopled by the mostly undeserving proud
we’re all held in sway of the swelter as the
mercury boils over into already leaded soil
and there’s nothing left to do but queue on
the hot tarmac outside the public pool and
pray for a chance at the chlorinated waters

angels 10

i close my eyes and feel your fingertips
drag circles on elbows and knees, joints
where interstitial movement reciprocates
and there i am with you, though we may be
far apart, the smallest trembling of my eyes
brings images to a waking dream, that life
can be so sonorous with you, hairs inside
my eardrums quiver quake with bursts of
you, the pouring forth elucidates a hidden
point of view, memories of conversations
play across my ears, momentary ecstasies
expand to fill my mind, the room, our years

what is this stuff? wide river flows between
us, diverted tapped bottled to quench the
thirst, children’s thirst, or friends or lovers
yet still more, torrential with the rainfall or
a parched trickling creek in dead of august
where the herring spawn and the heron fish
where the ospreys hunt and the seagulls peck
at scraps or one lucky pluck, and here grackles
scratch and scrape at the shoreline for a meal
and when we roar and flood and all detritus
is bandied down to sea, rapids foam white
there’s no room for anything but our water

floating way up here with you, the dazzling
star burns cumulonimbus into blue, and as
your sweeping arms lifted me way out into a
great wide open azure, the funnel clouds were
building all afternoon, cyclonic rotation now
ripping violently and i am torn pulled apart
the darkened sky obscures our view, and if
i cannot see you now, i let the tornado whip
me to and fro, trusting that a fair jetstream
or passing airliner will loft me back to you

i was fearful once, but when i knew, that if
i could only trust this feeling, tender or raw
like my heart’s put out to view, and now i’ve
shattered the glass, so like an art thief you
could take it, and if you want it on your
wall, or you could keep it in your pocket
and if you tore a piece to eat, i think i’d like
that much better than caged in my own chest

how did we get this close together, did we
slide in by inches, some days we'd sprint
miles in seconds, on others we'd creep a
millimeter, and with your trowel digging
in our barren plot, you’d pass me fistfuls
of seeds, and just the ones you dropped
would sprout a garden beneath our feet

time is not enough, it takes your love to
make it something, and as the seconds tick
my eyelids yearn to open, but then i wouldn’t
notice if i stuck them shut, cos either way i see
your face, and i’m reflected in two brown eyes
and the tip of your nose blurs as you move
your lips to meet mine, is it a dream, or is
it my memory, or it is just another of the
blesséd days on a whirling rock with you

the dao of wife

it crossed my mind one day to say
by text message, as i typically will
i am acceptance and you are change
standing on the bridge (not meters from
the first beaver i ever photographed on
the charles river, though these four years
i’ve often seen gnarled stumps of saplings,
evidence of their building a womb of a den
beneath the slow-straggling waters) i sent
those words and you replied nonchalantly

i think that’s so true lol

like it were the easiest thing in the world
to make a circle with another and put yourself
in it, a pinecone dropped in a birch grove
that stands its mast amidst the shredded
paper and the yellow belly sapsucker taps
the vast inky seascape charged with a point
of pure light that slowly twirling eclipses my
vision and then inexorably passes the void
reducing nothing to everything and all

our ride to rye harbor state park on saturday june 14th 2008

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