Daddy’s Girl

Like the veil of a bride
Tender falls the night
Around your sleeping head.
The moon as your attendant
Watches with shy pride
While leaves tap on the window —
Harbingers of future courtiers.

Proposal

If I gave you a thimble, would you give me a needle?
And if I hummed you a tune, would you sing me a song?
On a summer day, in the shade of your presence
I bask in the coolness of your touch
And point our clasped hands toward the sky, to ask:
Now here is our road, would you journey with me forever?

Advertisement

Moonlit Prayer

On a moonlit night, let me hang my promise
And on a gossamer thread attach hope
The world that turns
And the many days that fall into night
Is only waiting and anticipation

Family Lore

Were we to scramble up the crumbling steps
Of the red-shingled cottage by the sea
Smelling of salt and rain, and hollowed by moor cold
The peat moss with soft bulbous heads
Spread sleeping on the stone, a cushion for a mouse
And our bare toes, wrinkled by the long trek —
We would hear the rustling of the wind
Against the battered shutters left ajar
Abandoned like thieves in the dark
The luminescence of memories casting a wan glow
On nights spent gnawing on leather
And pulling spuds dark as stone from the ground
Handed down by a grandfather that never spoke
But did in the grimness of his lips
A history we dared to romanticize

Magnolia

The magnolia blossoms with pink blushes
Nestled within petals of ivory
Recall to me the romantic notion
Of ladies with porcelain complexions
Coyly staring behind the languid twists
Of wrist to fan, and fan to the bright corners of
Lips amused distantly by their admirers