If I understand
correctly, then
I have stumbled
on a rule,
a pratfall,
in my case,
accidentally
into a truth.
Not that rules
or truths must
ever exist
necessarily:
here, where I am lost, is
where the first word falls.
(April 24, 2026)
Category: change
-
-
I box them up—
one as flat
as another,
as only our
equivocations
can be believed.
I box them up—pack each tight
into darker,
smaller boxes,
until I can
no longer move.
I box them up—so they cannot fly
deeper and deeper
into a stranger hell
where all we fear
festers with hope.
(April 20, 2016)
-
From lackadaisical shadows
beneath a deep summer shade,
Long afternoons stretch slowly
into the lengthening night;
and old conversations drift
into comfortable silences.
Bits begin to fall away.
One idea contradicts
another until only a shape
of what’s not there remains
like ash, from a low fire,
maintains the shape of the wood
before collapsing upon itself,
and all that was there is not
but shadows cast by the moon.
(April 13, 2026)
-
He is in a chair in an empty room. It is dark outside.
He is in the same room, in the same chair. Light comes through a window.
He has questions, but is hesitant to ask. Unsure of the answer he seeks.
His uncertainty is his fear. He sits still for hours at a time.
The room never changes. The furniture is static and old.
The room is not the same, depending on where you look. Depending on where you sit.
The room was new once. The room is always empty.
The room filled with furniture slowly over time.
There are windows. They are shut, without curtains.
When the lights are on you can see in the room from the street.
There is nothing to see, but white walls without art.
There are windows, one cannot see much outside.
He holds his breath for minutes at a time.
When he feints, he quickly recovers.
(April 6, 2026)
-
I’m Okay Now
by
aging, change, gratitude, happiness, life, perspective, poetry, present, retirement, teaching, time, transition, writing
three years ago
at sixty-three
after thirty-four years
I stopped teaching
I stopped takinganti-depressants
stopped drinking
as much
the night terrorsthough not stopped
are less frequent
and less frantic
I am not somebodyout of a capra film
nor a famous nobody
listening to frogs sing
I am me— an old manwho still loves lisa
and writes little poems
few people will read
(March 16, 2026)
-
When what I see is not
making sense even in jest,
there is where the hinge bends
one plane into the veneer
of another, and I fall away
afloat in a delicate chaos
of dust through afternoon light.
I live along a distant periphery,
where change happens
like one season to another;
a slow edge of soft magma,
where tectonic plates patiently
grind their jagged stones
into a field of dominant debris.
(March 15, 2026)
-
listen for the unspoken
not the silence
filled with implications
and potential energy
but to everyday words
those spoken in hallways
almost a passing greeting
or between strangers waiting
quietly in awkward lines
for mid-morning coffee
those words which slip past
unremarked and unacknowledged
like the flow of giant rivers
which cut a new way
over time through bedrock
until the fixed boundaries
of cliche and custom
churn into a slurry of silt
inevitably forgotten
then again rewritten
(February 22, 2026)
-
- Climate
another warm day
too warm for February
the knife’s at our throat
belief thrives in a stasischange requires an awareness
2) Predictive Value in Metaphoreach morning we ask
after the night’s restlessness
as if a portent
one thing is like anotherthus as above so below
(February 10, 2026)
-
he shifted to the third person
someone outside his skin
someone easier to understand
someone easier to forgive
somewhere easier to hide
he felt under interrogationfor years answers formed easily
short sentences small words
now the simple questionswere grey nuanced and difficult
set with slow traps and baited
with articulate parenthesis
now he was no longer firstnow he had someone to blame
(February 5, 2026)
-
In this dream,
I unfold other maps
between petulant winds.
In this place, I am known,but not by this name,
not in this direction.
I have lost my way.It was a mistake
to come here today.
Ignorance always wins,because it does not know
it lost long ago.
Tracing a vein in my arm,I find a way home.
(January 17, 2026)
-
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)
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