For Frank

The sun sets finally on the man
who for so long pushed it back
concerned for a child scared of the dark.
Now, she looks up and seeing the stars,
weeps and prays at their light.

My mother was a seamstress

old coats and blankets
worn and washed until
the seams gave way
and mended haphazardly
to make them last that extra while
in remembrance of she
who gifted one and cut
and sewed other

The life of birds

Every spring the birds court their mates
and through the summer raise their young.
In autumn, they fly thousands of miles south.
In winter, the bare-limbed trees reveal the hidden nests
that they built in the spring.

Many lives lived season to season,
while I live only one through the years.

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Trustworthy

you say i’m oversentimental;
with a passing storm
my feelings shift
as if my love were built on sand
a hard rain demolishes
the tenuous trust between us

The Old Town

The traveler had gone this way before
and the route was familiar in its bends
even though the roadside inns he had known
were shuttered closed and eyeless.

At a spring made from snowmelt,
he doffed his hat to cup the cold water,
dousing his sunburnt face
when he saw the town’s stone marker.

He brushed his thumb against it fondly
and in his mind’s eye he cut the forest for grass
returning it to cow pasture, full of forget-me-nots.

A shy girl he had asked to dance on May Day,
decades ago, had loved them,
and pressed them between old books
to preserve them through the seasons.

He rose from aching knees,
knowing he couldn’t stay any longer
or he’d forget where he was going.

Hearth

She could no longer remember her mother’s laugh
but her body recalled it somehow
warmth spilling into the deepest part of her
stirring embers to re-light her from within

Christmas Card Etiquette

For years I sent you Christmas cards and never received a reply.
Once, my well wishes included an apology because we had argued.
(Neither the card nor the apology was acknowledged.)
This year, I lost someone and decided I would try one last time.
I thought that at least a goodbye should be full of good intentions and sweet.
This was the year, you decided to thank me for my card.
I cried, knowing I would never send you another one.

Waiting

a lock rusted shut
and a heart still within it
beating

To J, the lovesick

you who brought her to the doctor
and signed for her packages
so that her parents wouldn’t berate her
for expensive spending habits

once told me, she asked if you were in love with her

and you said no
but from then on,
it was push and pull

an isolation from other friends

this twenty-something
she had seen the color of your heart
found the pen to scribble over it
like a child vandalizing her belongings
THIS IS MINE

and still you persisted
even as you told me
where we would eat
what we would watch
what we would do

until one day I said no
and you fell silent

love or friendship
we are human beings
and not things to be used or tossed
or pulverized to fill
the gaps of other people’s wounds

Stranger

I, who have known you,
now only meet a stranger
who pulls layers over the child
trying her feet in shoes overlarge.

A bitter essence has been mixed in,
stirred and absorbed into her flesh.

Her eyes and touch hold
a sliver of ice, a dagger
poorly concealed — for me.