He reads the rules out loud
(though everyone has them on the handout)
enunciating
every syllable so clearly
that students are transfixed
as rabbits caught in headlights.
They can stop thinking now,
since it’s obvious no time will be
allocated in this lesson plan
with its carefully stated objective in ALL CAPS
to discuss whether the animals
they dreamed of researching—
manticore, minotaur, megalodon—
are extinct or imaginary.
Science Class
Last Night at the Cafe
Your teenage language, a dialect
made entirely of grunts and silence
Opened.
On stage,you played this new language
of old songs and guitar chords,
carved from nothing but talent
and your lazy will, harnessed.
The dinner crowd—
couples and old ladies and little kids
giddy with holiday shopping
understood you
Perfectly.
Divorce Is No Poem
There’s no poem hidden inside today.
I’ve looked in all the regular places,
deep into candles lit before dawn.
Nothing.
I’ll build one anyway—
Proving I’m just as selfish as he said.
So here’s a poem shaped from heavy gray air
in a cold marble courthouse
where lawyers step in to deliver
something else I can’t make on my own.
The only prize is no poem,
just a pair of scissors
wielded by a serious-faced judge
with the awful job
of helping me cut this snarled tie.
Dear Vince Guaraldi
You, and your two companions
who I only know as “trio”,
soften my heart every year,
on the strength of that one piano line
playing below the children’s chorus
from a simple world drawn in clear lines.
Back there, Charlie Brown and Lucy are ice skating
and tasting snowflakes.
This makes it easier to breathe, here where I live now,
the same way construction paper trees
masking-taped to classroom windows calms me,
this comforting sameness across the years.
I’m almost certain I could peer through that classroom window
and see myself, at 5, carefully gluing colored circles,
counting 1,2,3,4,5 as I pressed each link together,
concentrating, building a paper chain to the future.
On Not Translating Dante’s Canto XVI
When the crazy years fall under the rumba
and the water’s so hot, it spirals into similes,
quelled. Arnie and Fannie rumba away
though three men try to part them.
The corridor rings with old Mel Torme songs
and passion underneath it all. The place
is filled with little pigs who drink martinis
and wine every night, and the grave man
who says “The trees!” over and over as if you didn’t notice.
Stay sober,sashay your clever nose to the Bossa Nova.
Like chimes, those little pigs live in our memories
Just recently, at Vecchi’s bakery, then later
like stars in the firmament,
Incessant.
It anchors me to purchase all I remember.
As my doctor will attest,
It’s natural. She’s crazy, he’ll decide.
Oak Leaves
I captured two enormous oak leaves
and brought them home.
Dark brown, thick and leathered,
kept for weeks,
they were meant to star in a poem:
Something about plenty and treasure
and being carried on the wind.
Yesterday, I let them go—
tucked them under
the lavender bush in the garden
to escape my attempts to pry them open,
or shape them into a message.
They deserved a rest, having
taught me all they could
about not disintegrating
or growing brittle.
Poetry Is Sneaky
I drift away, like a fickle lover.
Poetry never stamps its foot,
or chases after me,
or texts me late at night
with outrageous demands.
No, poetry goes all quiet.
Then tosses me something—
In the used book section of
the temple of Barnes & Noble,
it slides a book into my hands and disappears.
And we’re off again—
I remember how it is:
A crate full of words,
the lines of a face
arranged just so
and it’s crazy love all over again.
Head Full Of Numbers
Today I woke up
with my head full of numbers.
Click of calculators in my ears
tumbled me out of bed
to clutch my red checkbook.
Numbers in, numbers out
and a sleepy number 3
who tried to sneak away
for a bit more shut eye.
Still Reading Ruth Bidgood
I only allow myself one (two)
poems per morning,
doling out this treat of language
to make it last.
After a poem (two)
I put the book down,
look out past the candlelight
to the dark, then lightening
world, the spray of snow on
my neighbor’s roof,
and dream of Wales.
Fairy Tale
“Her eyes shone like two bright stars, but there was no rest or peace in them.”
From The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Anderson
Eyes full of rest, of peace
is the gift I’d give you, daughter–
Hunting everywhere till I found it,
asking crows and witches
in every village I passed,
willing to pay any price.
I would carry it home tucked in my red cloak,
Then wrap it in bright green paper, to
remind you of holidays and growing things
and tie it with a red bow.
I would tell you, Look for this
one gift, tucked beneath the tree
to delight you in the morning.
Because I’ve bound my heart to you
my gift would be to see you smile
and mean it.
