Of course, there’s a soul:
I take a shot of bourbon
as I pour the next—
(June 2, 2026)
Category: acceptance
-
I could write about the dogs,
their usual sniffs and yips
as they go about their doggy lives,
but they are both curled asleep
on the rugs in the front room;
or I could write about Lisa,
who I have loved and written
about for more than forty years,
but she too is quietly napping
in one of the overstuffed chairs
by the back room’s windows.
Outside, the wind waves slowly
through the sycamore and oaks
like a man treading water off shore.
Earlier a friend sent me an article
showing Americans who say they drank
over the last year has declined
by a third since the 1970’s.
This does not alleviate at all
the grey flannel feeling this hangover
has draped across my melancholy day.
(May 17, 2026)
-
He stopped forgetting,
and began again to see
the shadows in the trees.
No longer willingto hide in oblivion’s
darker eddies,
his questions turnedto soft acceptance,
and he felt free.
Memory shiftedand reshaped itself
to a looser fit,
more comfortableto the details
he wished to deny.
(April 30, 2026)
-
If I understand
correctly, then
I have stumbled
on a rule,
a pratfall,in my case,
accidentally
into a truth.
Not that rulesor truths must
ever exist
necessarily:
here, where I am lost, iswhere the first word falls.
(April 24, 2026)
-
The ground shimmers
beneath my feet;
I reach out to find
a wall to steady
the loss of gravity,
until time gathers
the disparate shapes
back into me.
I’ve heard this before—again, too often.
So much so,
I stop listening:
I know how it ends;
we all know the end.
(April 11, 2026)
-
Process
by
I do not sing these songs
as much as mutter
over what I notice
like an itinerant priestparsing last rites randomly
to people passing outside
nevertheless I trust what I saymatters yet to whom or how
I do not pretend to know
there is a truth to poetryI will never understand
for it occurs without my help
I have become resigned to itas with much of my life
things happen as they happen
(April 7, 2026)
-
The dogs are disturbed;
their morning routine
has changed. They know it.
They follow closely
as I do not follow
their daily pattern.
They are anxious
for the future
to be the past,
for their bowls to be
filled with kibble
on time, now.
They know the past
is not prologue; the past
is the future; the past is
now. They know it.
Their dark eyes full
of soul follow me
through the house
wondering why
I do not know anything,
so simple,
about time.
(April 1, 2026)
-
Poem
by
A rose requires
no one to notice
it bloom; come spring,
it just blooms.
(March 27, 2026)
-
Sancho Panza
by
Nine books lie
on my bedside
table, unread:
six poetry,
two non-fiction,
and Don Quixote.
I should finish
Cervantes—
or at leaststart— once
again, now
that I’m older,
and his windmills
have turned to giants.
(March 24, 2026)
-
i don’t know
he says to himself
about nothing in particular
and then smilesfor he knows
for once he’s right
(February 25, 2026)
-
Walking into the kitchen
I forget my reason
for going; I stop,
and retrace my steps.
As when I am reading
and my attention drifts
lost in the dream of text,
I must return, sometimes
pages back, to regain
myself and what it was
I was looking for before
I wandered through the door.
(February 24, 2026)
-
inevitable
by
I make our dinner—
noodles with snow peas and shrimp.
She is not hungry.
We have forgottenhow many times we’ve been here.
Decades of hope lost.
Another year ends—Our pensions are still enough;
the night darkly falls.
We drink to forget—Tonight we dance a circle;
again, we are here.
Again, day falls into night.Life is inevitable.
(New Year’s Eve, 2025)
-
Memory is all that we are,
and all that we are is what
we remember. These days
I often forget why I enter
a room as I enter. I’m forced
to wait on the blurred past
with its dead possibilities
to catch up to my present.
We sit comfortably couchedabout the room. We confess
our stories again, shifting
scenes to allow for shapes
which differ, to be polite,
from others in other rooms.
(December 28, 2025)
-
I’ve tossed yarrow stalks on a table,
and stared blankly at arcane cards
pretending at small divinations.
Last week I’ve been reading poetrythat survived orally for millennia
before copied slowly onto a page.
I’ve done all these things before,so much so I almost recognize
the footprint’s patterns in the sand.
Each morning repeats itself:I let the dogs out, start coffee, piss,
as if the sun wouldn’t rise otherwise.
Yet, it does, as it will again:so starkly beautiful, so new.
(December 15, 2025)
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