days arise and fall
as time flows
without direction
and I don’t know
what season has come
or if there is a beginning
or an end this time round
(February 26, 2026)
Category: present
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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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memory agitates into vision media res: the precise moment of peak self-revulsion, the inaction, the cowardice, the lie inherent in regret— when nothing more could have been done, nor anything now retroactively applied which can act as balm to the shame carried for decades through the day in those quiet moments on the way to work, waiting for the light to turn green, or some phrase, or song on the radio which tumbles memory’s cascade through the spongey canyons to again reconfigure itself into this contiguous present as some other story without static cause
(December 25, 2025)
-
rain
by
a soft drought-ending rain
falls overnight
and into the morning
one liveswithin the moment
only
when one understandsthere is nothing
to stand under
and lets the rainwithout metaphor
wash over you
(December 8, 2025)
-
My father’s ghost has returned
to haunt me after decades
of silence. I only knew
his decline; now, I’m learning
my own, a slow remembrance.
I’m no Hamlet; to avengehis death, I would kill myself,
there would not be a question.
Telling that story once more,
I am what remains of him.
At night looking for water,not as broken as he was,
I see him in the mirror,
frowning at me from the side.
My body reflects his own.
My mom used him as a threateven after he was gone:
If you could be half the man
he was…if he could see you…
what do you think he would say?
She has been gone for years now,
while he hangs on the edges
darkly brooding as in life,
a storm always eminent,
on the verge of violence.
I saw my future at eight,and a clearer past today:
his presence was an absence
always nearby, yet distant
like a shadow on water.
(November 16, 2025)
-
The ghosts have returned.
Along an edge, they tremble
into view, then vanish,
if I turn to look.
It is best I ignore them,
as they roll and tumble
near my hesitant feet.
I fear to step on them.
They are soft like kittens,
but with longer memory,
and a sharper clarity.
Details bend, slowly feel
their way, to insert tendrils
along darker fissures
to occupy spaces reserved
for conflicts of the present,
but now quiver gently
with decades of regret.
(October 30, 2025)
-
terra incognita, terra pericolosa
We run from shadows
to shadow
without explanations.
We are here:
for a moment;to wait,
to watch,
to worry.
Yet, here now,light flows
in shadows
only here.
So, be wary,be warned, and run.
(October, 5, 2025)
-
O the hell
we must breathe
with the dust
of redemption
as our ghosts whisper
— revising our past —
our skin glows
with angelic sweat
like saints gilded
in gold leaf
over brick arches
in byzantine cathedrals
all these obligations
we must attend to
as the day descends
and night grows
from shadow
nearby
(September 19, 2025)
-
It’s rumored one sees
as you die one’s life.
What if what one seesis the life as lived
unfolding in timeso fleeting, yet vast?
Each momentarilya live memory
not a life once livedbut the life you have.
Then it disappearsas if in a dream
of which one forgetswithout waking up.
(September 4, 2025)
-
“We must ask grace from ourselves.
Our memories.
Let them
release us from the past.”
—Diane Wakoski
I call them forth
to excuse the present:
the responsibility lies
somewhere else,
in someone else
no longer me.
I don’t want to bethat, so I change,
take a step to the side,
and feel them slip past,
like ghosts, or smoke,
unmolested by time.
Then finally, so much,which does not matter,
falls away quietly
like a cicada’s
dry carapace
at summer’s end.
(July 4, 2025)
-
“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
—William Blake
The cabinet clock has stopped again.
After following me through the house,
the chihuahua curls in my lap,
This morning, I’ve read some poetry,
talked to Lisa over a breakfast I made,
and folded laundry. Now, I take time
to think, and write this poem
as the dog sleeps contently nearby.
I think about winding the clock, then don’t.
(April 24, 2025)
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