100 Short Poems
Aberdeen, Maryland
Grayish winter clouds move in a silent train above
the apartments, homes, businesses, streets and lanes
of this self-anointed "America's City." Keeping count,
a large hard-to-miss sign opposite the library entrance
displays the YTD numbers of drug overdoses and deaths.
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.
The “Most Christian King”
was a title that Catholic popes traditionally conferred on
the kings of France. Some worked hard to prove it.
Francis I roasted heretics like spitted game before Notre Dame
with France's nobles and high ecclesiastics all assembled there
to affirm their stalwart allegiance to Christianity's "Prince of Peace".
Closed church
The pews all wear a coat of dust.
In the loft, darkness drapes the organ's gilt.
The stained glass dedications in a foreign language
Are inscrutable to the visitor's eyes
As if none are left who can read them.
Winter full moon
In a cloudless dawn sky
low and seemingly close
large and shining brightly
settling a calming influence
on a solitary, unquiet mind.
African Drought
Seen from high above,
their heads turned inward
and rear hooves splayed out,
a small circle of dead giraffes
atop the baked rust-colored earth.
Harbingers
My window panes rattle. Outside
the clouds are speeding elsewhere quickly.
Bare tree branches wave as if crazed.
Brown leaves scud along the ground.
From the west, a cold front is pushing in.
Early adventure (Kennebunkport, ME)
All unaware of the dangers involved,
how could two exploring boys resist
the weathered rowboat with oars found
becalmed in the tidal reeds and rushes
beside the river running rapidly out to sea.
Prodigal nature in Philadelphia
With nowhere to go and no one to feed,
the Fall acorns litter the sidewalk and curb
on busy 11th Street beside the Convention Center.
The people passing will not collect and eat them.
And the other animals prefer our abundant refuse.
For you, reader,
your death, if not yet arrived,
already well-established, waiting
patiently as you tick through things to do.
And who can know after which particular one
it will be there - waiting and ready to claim you.
Recollection
Stepping innocently at first
down the decades of my life
but unable finally to find a narrative -
my mouth and memory both now
filled full with the bitter.
The Principal
said, twice, "You two go."
We didn't want to
leave the other boys in the chapel
kneeling now with backs straight
the way only ours had been before.
Athens, Greece
On a rooftop terrace in the predawn dark,
after collecting together some things to eat,
I sit facing a rocky outcrop across some rooftops
its top bathed in spotlights that warm an iconic ancient
weathered building aglow above the waking city.