
The morning is humid and thick with heat.
Yesterday cloaked its version of today
in brighter shades than those of nostalgia:
the past’s certainty belies its troubles.
I live along an edge of some other,
Uncomfortable in the skins given
to me for the roles I need to play now.
Like hope, regret is best left to itself.
It is as if I’m stuck in a crevice,
the walls widening above and below
where the frenzied wind leaps from edge to edge
until vanishing to violent air.
No opportunities rise with the sun;
I feel old, and know the end has begun.
(July 2, 2026)

I did not know him
as the child I was
anymore than the man
I have become—
He was a shadow
sifted in story
his deep voice laced
with decades of smoke
before dying
into mom’s revisions
I still don’t know
what I was afraid of
(Father’s Day: June 21, 2026)
by

If something is not part
of a pattern, does not repeat,
is it still not a norm—
the norm of the anomaly?
For more than fifty years,
I have scratched my poems
like a dog its ear searching
for temporary relief.
The comfort of a pattern:
another successful day
passes without consequence.
I’ve placed a word on a page,
replaced nothing with purpose.
As above so below.
(June 20, 2026)