Ten or so patients, tired
faces
framing sad or troubled eyes

sitting on narrow chairs
nursing
muffled, tentative hopes

as if modest needs might
conjure
successful outcomes

Standing in the sun in a sleeveless black dress
a willowy young woman wearing long white gloves
(a handsome beau close behind, his eyes on her)
body in profile, confident face turned to the camera
unknown life ahead beyond the picture's border

Emerging, radiant in a lacey white bridal gown
from a darker church interior into sunshine
(her new husband in a white jacket beside her)
happy family and friends filling the church steps
as she descends them into her life's newest role

Leaning on one arm, stretched on the floor
before the gleaming Christmas tree decorations
(a toddler, mouth agape, in front of her)
beaming at the still small but growing riddle
she will invest decades loving and deciphering

Sitting smiling, accessorized with a red fez
a happy traveler atop a camel in Egypt
(sans father, brother, beaus, husband, son)
experiencing the exotic and the wider world directly
and not described in a man's pictures and letters

Standing alone and adrift in a nursing home room
hair gray, features frozen by advanced Parkinsons
(a colorless and nondescript wall the backdrop)
perhaps about to ask again, very slowly,
how things could ever come to this

Dad, you were in love with sleep.
In particular, the fully-clothed daytime nap,
that personal domestic tradition you created.
It was rest, prophylaxis, repose.
On weekdays, an elegant even sensible way
to be average, to pare your output
and to not shame your social worker peers.

Comfort food was your secular sacrament:
the flesh-colored specialty hot dogs
bought from Carl the German grocer
that split lengthwise when boiled,
potatoes in almost any form,
peas, redolent of childhood, and
always some baked Hostess treat.

A son and brother to start,
you were a seminarian
a counter-espionage agent
a judge's personal bailiff
a failed grocery store owner
a social worker
a husband and father in manhood.

My imagination inflamed and choices shaped
by your stories that needed no embellishment:
coffins filled with bootleg whiskey in a hearse at night
a grave dug in bitter cold and then lain in
a Nazi agent caught who swears vengeance
a Cardinal interceding for a vicious mobster
an alpha politician peeing on a rival's casket.

Now that I've reached your age at death
I nap fully clothed when I can at midday,
but usually with my head down at my desk.
I make healthier choices for food comfort,
savor memories made and risks taken
in jungles and foreign cities, in the air and underwater,
readying myself, some day, to lie in a grave without regret.

wonder toddling across
a crewcut green lawn
chasing a butterfly
that alights, wings pulsing
on a trellis hung rose

an enchantment
sheer wings throbbing
amid leaves and thorns
in midday summer sun
that startles something awake

and then a call
I look back
to mother standing
beckoning in our
kitchen doorway

Spring, early morning.
The beach a large bare torso in repose.
On the city side, a shabby collar:
the soiled boardwalk.
On the ocean side, white skirts
of crashing waves.

Beyond the surf,
the fish swim and swarm, their features expressionless but buoyed with fish happiness.

Like a tree without its leaves.
Still recognizable.
Arguably stronger.
Less vulnerable.
The outline clearly seen.

But much is missing.
Signifying color.
Growing shapes and
their light and shade
to complicate the outline.

The tree is always
Only as alive as
Its next green buds.

Their store-brand names mostly obscure,
no darlings here of media advertising,
my kitchen cupboard's contents sit mute
in the dark behind their closed door,
pregnant with stories unremarked.

Here in serried ranks of cans the large
yellow jacketed pineapple chunks
discreetly touching sides with the smaller
sale-priced cans of, red with ruby undertones,
whole-berry cranberries.

Natural chunky peanut butter in glass jars
sits near small tins of herring in olive oil.
Their plant and animal proteins yet sensing,
on this dry shelf, shared chemical affinities
that no processing or packaging can hide.

Canned Alaskan pink salmon, julienne cut
sun-dried tomatoes, fire-roasted salsa, tomato
pesto with pine nut, dark chocolate with almonds
all derived from sunshine, and now packaged, stored and
quietly awaiting processing to their next transformation.

Is an old and humble one.
We go back so many years
that I've forgotten how we met,
when I got it, the important details.

It is surprising, this carelessness about
something I spend so much time with.
It stays at home when I travel, but
otherwise it is a constant companion.

It waits each night patient and unaware
that commerce might come between us.
For who among us is not vulnerable to media
hype and the lure of the new and different?

So, wherever I turn these days I find the
friendly-seeming man touting his pillow
designed to provide tailored support
and with patented fill that won't go flat.

Impossibly, he promises each happy
customer the "best night's sleep in
the whole wide world" with a pitch that
troubles my sleep on my own pillow.

Without it and human vagaries and inconstancy
would we have all the songs about cheating
hearts, the poems raptly rummaging through
the rubbish heaps of what was once love?

Happily, thousands of tests by sociologists,
psychologists and behavioral economists
confirm that almost all people cheat.
But most don't cheat as much as they could

Using flexible reasoning and rationalization,
we manage just enough dishonesty to get
some advantage but, despite the facts,
still maintain a positive, attractive self image.

Dishonesty has its interesting predicates.
Who knew that the probability of being caught,
or even the expected amount ill gotten benefit,
have no effect on behavior's shaping scales?

Instead, like impressionable children, we
adjust behavior to what we see others do,
to what a culture sanctions, to small excuses,
and even to how innocent others could also benefit.

The bushes wear the snow like dowagers
accepting an inexperienced stylist's
failed experiment with highlights.

In the distance, an explosion
of small black shapes - swift birds
in the dull white sky.

A tumble of frantic, freighted words
swirl like snowflakes in a blizzard
as we talk.

In an apartment opposite
a white cat with black patches
conjures prey from under blanketing snow.

You: never once passing
without some scowl on
your angry face.

Me: glad for a scowl.
Good to know where
one stands.

Suddenly, hello!
All smiles as we walk
in the same direction.

This natural now,
as if we're old friends
or prospective lovers.

Sister Gregory in second grade
explained how to avoid hell
through faith and acts
to ascend at the end
to heaven's glories.

In high school the priest at mass,
a diminutive Franciscan poet,
spoke his gentle homilies as we
jaded adolescent boys slumped
into the oak chapel pews.

My father, a former seminarian,
once told me that some knowledge
might lead me from religion but
that more knowledge eventually
would lead me back to God.

Having heard them and others out,
and then engaged with life's tumult,
finding in it what worked for me,
I am content to live both in the now
and in the memories of what I've been.

Sometimes the one you're in or on,
however likable, isn't for you now.
Other trunks, leaves and crowns
sing a song that wins your heart.
Under a clear sky, you leave
and make a nest on other limbs.
Without comment, the sun paces above.
The moon beams through passing clouds.

Who knows why, but one day
something subtle shifts inside
and you begin to notice again
the shapes of other trees.

I thought of you today
as I shopped for food
in the local Target.

Your sister-in-wrath was there
spanking a child in the candy aisle.
Anger and mean-spirited behavior always
conjure your wrathful self-righteousness.

Since always you return to me
in such unpleasant ambushes
it's best to harbor safely at home.

The contemporary species
found far from
traditional haunts
in special boxes
on hatstand trees
and hallway pegs
are assertive beasts
that expect attention
on a head or in a lap
each fulfilling its destiny
in the surprised or admiring
eyes of others

Before the embellishments of art,
the piled debris of precedent,
the overhang of historical usage,
in the beginning there was simply
the subject and the verb.

Object came next.
Other functions followed.
Language depicted the world
but still lacked the verbal cue
for imagination to create.

Until and arrived,
uniting here and hereafter,
opening narrative horizons,
allowing a sentence to continue
forever and....

Something you might to have noted
about the use of this short but heavy
prescriptive word connoting obligation.
At least in spoken English, it is not used
as much in these more permissive times
because it is not as good a fit for us now.
And so it has been replaced by words
that soften the force of obligation:
the somehow friendlier "ought to"
the implicitly more personal "have to"
the breezily advisory "got to"

Walking the Gran Via in Madrid before dawn:
Most people stand in doorways and near corners, watching for
Signs, but resigned to ushering night out.

Leaving Rome in a Rainstorm:
Umbrella shredded, suitcase soaked, train ticket to Florence
Tucked beside my damp wallet.

Approaching the Nudist Beach in Barcelona:
A bicyclist dismounts, the walkers all slow, no one wants
to pass by too quickly.

Washington's Constitution Avenue on July 4th:
A loud band marching between the throngs of sweating citizens
lining the avenue.

April, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris:
The central lawn's lush green blanket untrod, unblemished,
small sails tilt and circle in the large stone basin.

He wrote how he remembered the happy times and the USO dances.
He wrote about feeling lonely despite being in the constant company of men.
He wrote to apologize for bringing her home so late that one time.
He wrote that things were better then than he could ever have expected.
He wrote he'd come back and take her to Times Square and Rockefeller Center.
He wrote how he had been happiest in the sun on the beach at Narragansett.
He wrote that things were getting much worse but wasn't allowed to say how.
He wrote: remember me.

She recalled a setting with silver tableware and linen napkins.
She recalled the shivery sensation when she first wore nylon stockings.
She recalled the big band music and happy bustle at the Providence USO.
She recalled digging her toes in the wet sand where the waves sank in.

I have been reading old letters.
I have searched for the girl who became my mother.
I have learned how easily things could have been different.

To the drive-time program.
Passing cars and trucks
As new stories play out.

To the business briefing.
With the soundtrack diverging
From and intersecting with the graphics.

To an angry old man.
He complains that times are bad
And that no one will listen.

With irritation and resentment,
To the neighbor dog’s angry barking,
Once again as you start to open your door.

Patiently, as a child explains
What she has learned today
And why it matters.

Carefully, for the lover
Arriving home much later
Than the promised time.

Intently, to the changed breathing
As your mother's body begins cooling,
First from the feet and hands.