this letter will be ignored
as so many others
or perhaps worse
misread
as if
some other
were the subject
instead of you
(February 9, 2021)
Another Sad Love Poem
Category: romance
Prelude to a Kiss
I know nothing
of you other
than brief moments
I’ve observed,
as you of me.
Yet still, we must
come to trust
what we know
is enough.
(June 3, 2018)
Longtime Infatuation
embers, embedded
beneath the snowy ash, burn
slowly, secretly.
(April 29, 2018)
take them as they are
four haiku
I use words as walls,
and as balm. These are my hands
I hold out to you.
*
I cannot control
the flailing rising from dream;
the dream controls me.
*
your absence ripples
the nightmare through the next day,
pebbles on water.
*
I need your presence,
your soft breath through the night,
and morning’s first hug.
(February 21, 2018)
still in love
in a few weeks it will be
forty years since we went out
for a banal movie and pizza—
forty years, college, a marriage;
three children grown,
and moved out mostly.
We are grandparents now.
Isaac toddles about the house
determinedly going where he goes,
as we follow behind bemused.
I think we worry too much
for the troubles we have. I am
aware they are there, as they are—
yet, so am I, and so are you.
(February 19, 2018)
Valentine Haiku
anticipation and regret
as a boy he wrote
all the words
she might say
in old age
he revises
all she said
(February 12, 2018)
Necromance
As blood from wine,
He is transformed;
The words solidify—
Lift from the page
Like a starling murmur
flows in morning air.
Obsessively, his thoughts
Turn and return
To the slightest wisp
She might, in passing,
Have whispered.
Memory is present
Always to form
A different future.
He writes and revises,
Remembers and reforms,
As if a candle’s smoke
Can reshape a flame;
As if all the words
Are uttered correctly,
He will be reborn.
(February 5, 2018)
Crush It
“yet, to crush this a little, it would bow to me”
—Malvolio, 12th Night, William Shakespeare
I wasn’t one of them,
I just want you to know—
I wasn’t like those others
She said almost as if she
Believed what she said
He smiled and nodded
As she said it again
But he knew as well
As she that she was one
Of them and was the same
But he was in love and wanted
Her to be what he wanted
Her to be not with those
Who were those who giggled
And mocked his doleful thoughts
Not that he cared then or now
He was in love then as now
And wonders now why she
Wanted him so badly to know
She wasn’t one of them
(December 24, 2017)
Daybreak
Morning’s light kisses
The edges of the elm’s leaves;
I wake to your arms.
(November 23, 2017)
