Poetry

Published poems from my collection, questions

shadows

I take photos of shadows and steal light from the dusk of    buildings
that lean toward night and an alley shadows of plants that fall across
sidewalks but not shadows of people I have no right to their secrets
contrasts stops me every time but the shades of grey keep me looking
charcoal pewter silver slate ashen the color absent from a flower
revealing its structure I once heard someone say that shadows are signs
of aging and that's where I find the truth

fall in the garden of Hotel Le Pigonnet, Aix-en-Provence, France

two white turtle doves in a black iron cage in the middle
of the garden thick with the smell of fall rain and old moss
one listless in the dusk deep in retreat her dark eyes drift
up as the shadows of late days and tall cypress lean down
dawn is dimmed sinking into rain and a dove
gone dead I imagine how
heavy it feels to fall to lie on the cold floor then light
in hand trees turn away and the wind moves on
nothing more but the cries short and a pause then slow
and long her mate's wings lifted by the slight
stir the yellow leaves of the ginkgo tree against the musky sky turn
and I wake to fluttering in my chest and the sound of wings on metal

insomnia

when I open my mouth anger comes out so I don't instead I turn
over and try to sleep I remember when you left the refrigerator door
open and walked away I shut it doors slow and silent or fast
slammed the dark drain of betrayal swirls thresholds seep away I
walk out of the house into the night and look back the light from the
open door is beautiful clean-edged deep and cold it spills milk-like
onto the tile floor

Saturday morning with Lenny

we were listening to the baseball game on the car radio so there's no
talking and I already knew there's no crying in baseball way before
Tom Hanks said so the loud and running, voices talked strikes and
balls and raced the wind from the window where the metal frame was
angry hot so don't touch it stupid its August and little did we know fifty
years later his wife would die the same day and he would be gone ten
years before that and there was no crying then either the last time I
talked to him he was yelling curses like fast pitches and flinging rage
like curve balls al strikes and the hot wind of regret