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Distinctions

A Wood for Sale sign beside the road in northern Maine
atop an open-sided roofed shed with three bins:
Soft Wood on the left in an ample bin, perhaps pine.
Hard Wood in the ample bin on the right, likely red maple.
And Cedar in the much narrower sweet-spot center bin.

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Departure

In this somber painted leave-taking
the poor mother and several siblings
look on, both anxious and encouraging,
as a lad strides into a panoramic landscape
of challenges the distant dark clouds portend.

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Nuns

My daytime mothers those first eight school years,
those women in black habits and white wimples
who carefully cultivated my ability to read and write,
deserved better than the prompted tepid thanks that,
without conviction, was all I ever gave them back.

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Free

While carried across the fair grounds
a tired child lets loose a string.
Her balloon, adrift now,
quickly rises above any parent's grasp
to drift past riders atop the Ferris wheel.

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House Fire

As if it knows no natural limits
smoke occupies the vacant house.
Emblematic of the flames flickering at first,
heat follows behind increasing explosively
until the house becomes a furnace.

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Forgetting

A hat. Keys. Gloves. Notes. An expensive umbrella. But
also documents. Good advice. Warnings. Even memories.
So much forgetting, and so often, that, blithely unconcerned,
we forget that we have forgotten and so are able to live
calm and contented lives as if we were exempt from loss.

100 Short Poems

Distinctions

Departure

Nuns

Free

House Fire

Forgetting