FOR CAMILLE GRACE

With the practiced grace of a water ballet
she floated into our world

Rising to the surface like a miniature mermaid,
her roseate skin reflecting our joy.

She squalled upon her arrival, the water
rippling with delight as she navigated her way into our hearts

FOR  ELIAN

At precisely 4:30 am
on a thick Miami morning
all masks, rifles and jagged bravado
they kicked in the door without warning

The family scattered like frightened birds
they could not believe what they saw
as they were thrown to the ground and kicked
all in the name of the law

Elian hiding in the closet
wrapped in his saviour’s arms
Poor Elian, terror in his eyes
just wants to be safe from harm

Reno’s rangers snatched the boy
in an act of retribution
because a terrorist named Castro wanted him back
to hell with the Constitution

DON’T ASK

She glides up behind me
on feet as soundless as spring’s last frost

Her arms insinuate themselves around my neck
with the warmth of cashmere

And I dare not ask how I found her
or how I may lose her

THE ARRIVAL OF LILLIAN EVE

She emerged like
taffy
a sweet swirling
confection
with a complexion of butterscotch,
her lungs bellowing
the triumphant arrival of a
fresh life wet with promise,
the dew of birth reflecting
the sheen of humanity’s
effervescent smile

SOUTH HAVEN

Autumn
          October
hunched along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan
like an abandoned child
South Haven waits for summer’s return

My wife and I
stroll the streets
now reticent and barren
like the beach itself
sulking behind the buildings
where seagulls screech their impudent calls
as they prepare their escape
from the looming
hostile Michigan winter

Along the beach
rows of gift shops
tee shirt shops
fast food cafes
sit shuttered and dark
rejects to the changing season
that leaves them barren and sequestered
like victims of a dreaded disease

The sound of our footsteps
ring past the seaside inns,
their blinds drawn against blank windows
the season’s dust settling like a plague
over unused furniture
closeted like unwanted dogs
behind locked doors

The clouds
like charcoal smudges
across a translucent canvas
wallow in their own reverie
hang
then drift eastward
over jade waters churned
by the rebuke of fall’s stiletto winds

South Haven
lives for the drone of motorboats
skiers in tow,
and the background chorus of tourists
in their flip flops and shorts,
hot hands clutching cold drinks
watching their kids scurry to the lake
like berserk lemmings

But as the inevitable cycle
plays itself out,
one last gull paces the beach
looks westward
and anticipates an arduous flight to the sun
as autumn bites
at its wings

DESCENDING ON A SNOWFLAKE

You must have descended on a snowflake
          From somewhere beyond the highest peak
                    where angels (if they existed) would twirl
                              like ballerinas on point, encased in raindrops

You must have descended on a snowflake
          wrapped in sunlight
                    surfing on a rainbow
                              coming to rest in my heart

I USED TO LOVE THE CITY

I used to love the city…

maybe because we both hummed
with kinetic vitality, youth/madness
twenty-four hour nonstop mania

An incessant surge of faces,
a blizzard of life simultaneously
blinding and buffeting, avalanches of noise
pulverizing the streets spread out
like entrails, leading everywhere
and nowhere in particular, yet they’d
take you there anyway through asphalt
curtains of hip-hop, reggae,
muscle coiling metal, ending where
Johnny Walker Red blues fizzes from
south side clubs and melds with
prickly country licks that don’t end
till the sun rises as hazily as a
homeless druggie’s cataract eyes

Sunrises erupting from the belly of
Lake Michigan, reflected in the glass
of the skyscrapers that sprout like
concrete weeds across the manipulated prairie
where the Midwest pioneer spirit
sweats and freezes in its perennial fatwa
against nature, giving no ground, grinding with
a force beyond its own power

Now I avoid the city…

with an older man’s defensive cynicism.
Where I once heard a jambalaya of music
turbocharging the heartland, I now hear
the riffs and rants of the inner city
buckling the listener with obscenity-fueled                                                                  
doggerel that attacks like terrorists,
corrupts like acid, degrades like gang rape

To cruise the streets now is to feel
as vulnerable as exposed organs, to lock
on the eyes of a populace that devours
its young for a divine high, vacant faces
barricaded in classrooms, while outside
the doors, sirens announce more blood
flowing through the sewers

My city is like a spoiled cake
hidden by a sweet florid frosting
and those City Hall bakers tell you
to hold your nose and take a slice, swallow
hard and ignore the indigestion

I observe from the safety of the borderlands
a city awash in the contradiction of growing
emptier as it grows fuller. Sometimes I think
I can still hear the chatter of traffic juking
like a pinball around its towering totems;
sometimes I hear voices in the farm fields
luring me away from the concrete dominions
of my youth, to a place where
the little voices are still cherished

THE TWIN DESTROYERS

Evil arrived sheathed in a metallic skin,
a winged hypodermic needle
injecting terror and death
into the American psyche.

The twin towers pointed skyward,
a monument to free minds
and unfettered intellect,
where dreams and reality meld and mutate.

Mohammed’s tribes sprang from their caves
like rabid bats, fueled by random emotions,
blinded by a thousand years of darkness,
 hating what they do not understand.

Where the Towers challenged the heavens,
the tribes wallowed in the muck of superstition,
force their only path,
myths their only blessed verities.

Evil hates the achievers,
for the world of evil is constructed
on pain and suffering,
where mindless sacrifice is the highest value.

The best defense is to keep erecting these towers
to heights these tribes cannot scale,
and let the tortured alloys of our hearts
provide the impenetrable materials.

What intellect builds,
tribalism seeks to demolish,
so be wary of the twin destroyers of humanity:

Faith and force

MISSHAPEN IDENTITY


Someone else is living my life…

someone taller, leaner, someone
who is dating angelic film actresses
that hang on his piston-like arms.
He’s living in my houses, too,
in South Beach and Malibu,
and throwing celebrity-laden parties
till the sun gropes its way overhead,
which is when he drives off in
my silver Mercedes SL500
to linger over a lazy breakfast
before jetting off to Cannes
to soak up the sun like a
sleek salamander asleep on the beach.

Which gives rise to the question:
Whose life am I living?

FOR CRAIG

My son reclines on the sofa
 eyes closed
arms crossed on his chest
                                 
his face pale and unlined
like the infant brought home
in a woolen bundle twenty years earlier

Only the shadowy stubble
outlining his lips and chin
provide a clue to his age

Only the wiggle of his toes
inside dingy white socks
hint at whatever dream
cartwheels past his slumbering mind

He is every bit the man now
yet forever locked in his father’s recollection
as a rambling two year old permanently frozen
 by a parent’s paralytic hold
on yesterday’s powdered  innocence

OPEN WINDOWS

We make love in the darkened bedroom
as the sound of a faraway train whistle
leaks through the open window,
a random chord from a broken night
that seeps into our lives
like a scream inside a cave

Screeching tires from teenage rust heap cars
and the distant rumble of trucks
hum like a low, incessant soundtrack
wherever there is an open window and a quest for sleep
and the wind paints portraits
of the city’s heavy breathing

BUZZKILL

BUZZKILL

She says she believes
Asks if I do

I am unsure how to respond
Grope the words like they were overripe fruit
Finally, after scouring the depth of her eyes
I say: I believe in life. The here and now
Anything else is a fairytail

Her eyes reflect aversion
That is a non-answer, she says

It is the only answer, I say

Like a delirious chipmunk, she chatters away
about the soul, oneness with the cosmos,
the universal energy, our individual auras
and the spirituality of the afterlife

I listen impassively, finish my drink
and wonder what it was about her
I found so sexy an hour ago

NORTH PIER (92)

A mid-August Chicago night
as sultry
as a hot shower
in a sealed tomb

A reggae band
rocks North Pier
with loping rhythms
and a Rasta spirit
against a backdrop
of skyscrapers
their lighted windows
sparkling like joyful eyes
alive with summer’s rapture
jutting architectural angles
looking more like
an impressionistic movie set
than real life

Each moment thoroughly
unabashedly
percolating with human current
surging through the city
on an inky sharp evening
as downtown wears
its shroud of buildings
with the audacity
to challenge the energy
down to its moorings

On the pier
 conventioneers shuffle lazily
tourists dawdle with goofy smiles
city dwellers dash and dodge
eat and drink their fill
of this lakefront cornucopia

Everyone is
an integral part of the synthesis
of music
lake breezes
fast food fragrances
and the manic energy of a city
bubbling
in its own dynamic juices

North Pier
an old broad brick structure
once a tireless warehouse
now retired
yet never so alive
as it plays
with the children of the night
while reggae music festoons
down the Chicago River
in celebration
of a precious
summer night

STRING QUARTET NO. 4

I sit on my patio
listening to Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4 in C minor
as the sun melds into the ionosphere,
dusk brushing the treetops

Unseen starlings chirp in counterpoint
to the morose movements,
violins evocatively weeping and celebrating
the composer’s vision

Lightning bugs spark in lockstep to the meter,
their jittery flight outlined in the gasping light.
Crickets, hunkered down in the shrubbery like insurgents,
provide the choral flourish that encapsulates
the flawless collaboration between Beethoven
and mid-summer dusk

MAGICICCADA

They are a tidal wave of life
          washing over farmland and forest
          yard and prairie

stirring from their seventeen year senescence
          to emerge en masse like a
          marauding army of winged warriors

eyeballs like ruby ball bearing
          wings as slight as Kleenex
          their mating call a staggering ninety decibel screech

like a million transmissions grinding
          in unison solely
          to attract a mate

I cannot blame them
          for I, too, would howl at ninety decibels  
          if I had to wait seventeen years between mating periods

TRAVELING LIGHT

I wish we could spend
         all our days together on the road

While I drive
         you would talk to me as America flashes by

As we tunnel
         past the predawn dew you would fall asleep

and I would adjust your blanket
         to keep away the snap of the morning chill

There will be corridors of silence
         where I will catch the sound of your breathing

And when we nestle
         like spring sparrows in the verdant arms of the Smokies

or flit over Florida sands
         like children in the throes of natural harmony

or hang glide in the clouds
         that crown the Rockies like a triumphant wreath

I will reach out and touch your hand
         as you gaze out the window

at the fixed path of highway
         as secure and preordained as our travels together

ONE JULY EVENING


Evening was sheathed
                    in a collective stillness

neither twig nor limb,
                   flower or bush

so much as fluttered or swayed.
                   It was as if nature held its breath.

The scent of milkweed and hostas
                   lingered like a lover’s perfume.

Mosquitoes twirled in the moonlight
                   to the locked cadence of chirping crickets.

And as the summer day
                   unraveled itself for slumber

its protracted sigh fell over the yard
                    like a gossamer blanket

under which we could wiggle our toes
                     and giggle till sunrise

July 1

It is pleasant in the shade

You sit across from me
absorbed in a novel
while I chisel away at a poem

However, I stop to watch you read,
the book laying flat on the glass table
as you lean forward, head slightly bowed

eyes fixed on the page.
Our cat, Smoky, creeps under my chair
to cheat the afternoon sun

that draws a shadow over half the yard.
Smoky stretches/yawns/brushes his head
against my leg.

Now you lean back in your chair,
oblivious to my stare,
just as I am oblivious to my poem

A restless breeze rankles the trees,
prompting impatiens to dance in the sunlight,
proving without a doubt
It is pleasant in the shade

YET AGAIN

She reads to him every night,
her eyelids as gummy as bread dough,
the words trickling out like wooden soldiers,
precise, regimented,
inflection as faded as bleached wallpaper

And his eyes locked on hers’
seeing but not hearing;
or hearing but not seeing,
watching the words form on  her lips
like ice crystals on glass.
His legs stir beneath the covers,
more reflexive than enthralled

She suppresses a yawn,
repetition surrendering to boredom,
the story unchanging night after night,
like the stars in the evening sky,
permanent and familiar,
yet unattainable in their scope

She bookmarks the page in the book,
knowing it matters not to him,
each page the same as the last,
the spoken words just one more exercise
of synchronicity between larynx and lips
but it matters to her,
for each passing page
is a measure of her own sanity

ESMERALDA

Esmeralda is a funny sounding name

like
the metallic groan
of faulty plumbing

or
a broken screen door
swiveling on its hinges

or
the squawk of
rain-drenched sneakers

When  I was a child of
five or so,
with ringlets of honey-toned hair
swiveling past my ears

there was a neighbor on our block
who, whenever he would see me,
would call out in that derisive sing-song
peculiar to all bullies

Hey, Esmeralda!
Hi, Esmeralda!

And I at age five or so
wanted to shrivel away
in my own skin
and throw up from my first
bilious taste of humiliation

And thanks to the thoughtlessly cruel
taunting by an adult,
this five year old learned

how to crawl inward for protection,
and how to distrust the human gaze,
                                                                                                       
and how to view oneself
as an oddity

He’s probably dead after all these years,
but in those odd moments
that hang like distended organs,

I can hear his voice
as wickedly sharp as a scythe
slicing my ego with the thrust
of every syllable
calling out:
Hey, Esmeralda!

My question has always been:
Why Esmeralda?
Why not Bob or Jane?
Mary or Charlie?
I guess he chose it
for only one reason:

Esmeralda is a funny sounding name

SILENT BALLET

We are like a silent ballet,
predetermined movement without cadence,
cues missed, leaps untimed,
unbalanced spins, misstep
followed by misstep, and yet
we push our way through the choreography,
our bodies telling the story
the music refuses to play,
our ears incapable of hearing,
nonetheless: we defy gravity
with every leap, a tribute
to our synchronicity with silence

GOING BACK

It stands its ground
like a disheveled drifter
wallowing in hard times,
its best years reduced
to a fading memory vanishing
like dew under a July sun

This is the house of my childhood,
the repository of happier times,
careless and carefree,
imprinted on my brain
like a recurring DVD

Over half a century ago
is when I spent my final night there,
a kid of twelve, uprooted
like an impudent dandelion,
only to be transplanted across the city
to our new home

Like an old man,
this house has shrunk with age,
a sliver of the stature imprinted
on a child’s memory. It looks
weary now, the siding faded and peeling,
shingles missing, front steps
rotting and buckled as if from fatigue

The lawn that I scampered across
is overrun with crabgrass and bare patches,
symptoms of neglect,
like the house behind it

I lack the courage to knock on the door
and request from the current owners
a tour of the interior, for fear
of what I might find. I risk my

recollection being repudiated
like a drugged hallucination,
a young boy’s idealized memories
mocked and trampled and as parched
as the front lawn

I close my eyes, turn my back, preferring
 to hold on to my sixty year old vision,
freshly painted and lushly landscaped,
infused with laughter and the scent
of Christmas trees and birthday candles,

because if I step inside, what other
memories of my youth will I find
tattered and soiled,
neglected and false?

CRYSTAL FALLS

Morning mist over the lake
          the frosty breath of the northwoods
          rolling like a sigh over the water
          chilled and quiescent, eagles overhead
gliding in curlique patterns
over the treetops, the birches

as tall and trim as totems, their ashen trunks
          staunchly defying Canadian winds.
          Only the drone of motorboats
          squander the stillness, fishermen,
poles in hand, heave lines into the snapping air,
eyes fixed on the water, their minds

clear as the sky, wait patiently for the kiss
          of northern pike upon their lures.
          To the west, faintly, like a
           growling stomach, storm clouds
gather and groan, delineating one more chapter
in the saga of  Crystal Falls.

STEEL MAN

He was a man of steel
                my father

Thirty-nine years pouched in the searing belly
                of the thirty-six inch plate mill

an acrid finger poking from the shore of Lake Michigan
                in an act of brazen defiance

For four decades he endured
                the blistering breath of white hot ingots

as they slithered through the mill
                performing their reptilian undulations

of semi-liquid menace
                with temperatures so intense

it felt like your skin was charring
                and your bones were melting like so much wax

Every day his lungs filled with iron ore dust
                as dense as the canopy of fog

hanging over the predawn lake
                and every week a different shift

scrambled his circadian rhythms
                until night and day lost their identities

causing my brother and I to live in dread
                of waking him in the middle of the afternoon

when the unforgiving night shift
                cheated him of valued rest

For thirty years he carried a scar
                on his right leg, a permanent memento

he often joked about as if it were a mere insect bite                
                before admitting to my brother and I

right after his retirement that an errant crane
                had nearly cost him a limb

Now the mill is cold and deserted
                an oxidized corpse on the bank of Lake Michigan

and as if their fates were forever bound and dissoluble
                they have both succumbed to nature’s forces

the cold, unflinching mill
                and that indefatigable man of steel
                                                                      my father

WE ARE GOLDEN

Like the early morning sky
glistening in my eye
          we are golden

Like the sun’s midday hue
I am blind without you
          ‘cause we’re golden

Like the glaze that paints day’s end
it’s the radiance you send
          for we are golden

MEMORY LAPSE

I don’t remember leaving the womb
nor do I recall leaving your heart;
yet one was my birth,
the other my death

SPRING TEASE

March can be such a tease…

          If it were a woman
          her aqueous tongue would be
          flitting along my neck like an ant
          tracking a trail of sugar,
          while her hand slithered
          toward my male vulnerability

          And when I would attempt to reciprocate,
          she would curl just out of reach,
          disinterested in the very emotions
          she stirred in the recesses of my gut.

          April, on the other hand--
          ah…April,

          Now there is a month that will go
          all the way.

BULLSHIT & DREAMS

There is a fine filament
between bullshit and dreams
that separates triumph from despair,
reality from fable

For what is bullshit
but dreams led astray,
deluded by fraudulent aspirations,
corrupted by fallacious reasoning

Dreams symbolize the purest of hopes
as yet unstained by the virus
of bullshit that mocks and erodes
and revels in failure

Bullshit is too often
the temptress that lures the innocent
into unsavory scenarios gilded
with grandiose promises of glory and riches

So we must, like adroit tightrope walkers,
negotiate that microscopic filament,
for history is replete with forlorn tales
of those who lost their balance

between
bullshit and dreams

FACE ACROSS THE WAY

She sat at a nearby table
directly in my line of vision,
and as I glanced up
from my black hazelnut decaf
I caught sight of her exotic looks:
cheekbones imperiously prominent,
eyes the shape of almonds,
dark as ebony shards,
wide and curious,
sleek hair boyishly cropped and lightly waved,
black as licorice,
skin unlined and imbued
with the hue of caramel

She seemed an amalgam of flavors:
African-American melded with Caucasian
with a tincture of Hispanic,
the riddle made more curious
by her white male companion
upon whose words she appeared to dawdle

Furtively, I would peek over my friend’s shoulder
to admire the beauty at the other table,
wrapped in a beige sweater,
its V-neckline pointing to her erotic crevice,
which I imagined to be warm and inviting
and crying for exploration

My friend spoke and I nodded perfunctorily,
more concerned with making eye contact
with the caramel face,
 as if it would link us like modem to computer,
and instantaneously we could communicate
our urges and whims
beyond this gulf of tables

She smiled at her companion,
her teeth as white as priceless porcelain
and haloed by ample lips
touched lightly by a mere suggestion
of magenta lip gloss.
I wondered how they would feel
on  my neck and mouth,
pliant and dangerous,
consumptive and loving,
whispering odes to our passion

For a second as fleeting as a note
in a Charlie Parker solo,
our eyes met,
and in an act of emotional cowardice
I looked away, seeking protection
in the faces of the other patrons,
preferring to think she now discovered my existence
and toyed with her own fantasies

Eventually I recouped my courage
to gaze at the tables
beyond my friend’s right shoulder,
where my nameless angel
sat preoccupied with her companion,
my face an anonymous extra
in this café scene

ON OUR ANNIVERSARY

On our anniversary
       as I watch you dress, I notice
        how lightly the years have brushed your face

I look at you
        and still see the piquant beauty
        with the brooding eyes

You are eternally
        the effervescent high school girl
        all giggles and breathless kisses

stolen on star-crusted
        beaches on evenings we hoped
         would last forever

You turn from the mirror
        to see me looking back at you;
        your smile washes away five decades

and I’m eighteen again
        standing on the beach, finally realizing
        the evening will last forever



GOLDEN PEARLS

The years accumulate like clam shells
washed ashore upon the beige sands of a Caribbean beach

Like fanciful children, we open the first ones
with eagerness, others with trepidation, and still others
as if ensconced in a dream, moving with rote routine,
giving only vague thought to what lay inside

Yet each pearl is immersed in its own special beauty
that only we two can fully appreciate,
for we shaped each one, polished its sheen,
imbued it with a glint reflected from our eyes,
like the twinkle from a far off galactic fire
burning since the beginning of time

The years, like the pearls,
have varied in quality. Some were dull and blemished,
misshapen and undersized.
While so many others were perfectly formed,
smooth and untarnished, radiating a flawless sheen,
full and breathtaking

Yet all of them are strung together
piece by piece, until they form
an unbroken necklace,  unique and permanent,
like time itself, each one a chapter in our history,
the strand binding us together

You are my golden pearl, my treasure,
the content and meaning of my life,
my purpose and motivation

And over a half century ago when the first pearl was formed
flawless and symmetrical, I knew then
I would lock each one away in the sanctuary
of my heart and soul

                                                       NO MORE WINTER BLUES

Why do they call it
          “Winter Blues?”

From my window I see no blue

The sky is the sullen gray
of decrepit drywall

The lawn wears the brown cast
of oxidized flesh

Trees, their limbs twisted and exposed,
look like emaciated monsters,
their hides blackened and scarred

From this moment forward
let the season be called
          “Winter pale”

For like an embalmed corpse
          its color has been drained
          and it awaits burial

###






                                                   BELOW THE LINE

I wish
          I had been born and raised in the deep south

Far below the Mason Dixon Line
          instead of being planted in the upper Midwest
          like a primordial glacier
          all rock solid
          and lethargic,
          lake winds coiled around my spine
          January whiteouts blinding
          like cataracts

And as I push
          a snowblower through a drift,
          somebody somewhere
          is slick with sunblock,
          and dripping with Gulf waters,
          grateful they weren’t born
          north of the Mason Dixon Line

SOUTH HAVEN

SOUTH HAVEN

Autumn
          October
hunched along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan
like an abandoned child
South Haven waits for summer’s return

My wife and I
stroll the streets
now reticent and barren
like the beach itself
sulking behind the buildings
where seagulls screech their impudent calls
as they prepare their escape
from the looming
hostile Michigan winter

Along the beach
rows of gift shops
tee shirt shops
fast food cafes
sit shuttered and dark
rejects to the changing season
that leaves them barren and sequestered
like victims of a dreaded disease

The sound of our footsteps
ring past the seaside inns,
their blinds drawn against blank windows
the season’s dust settling like a plague
over unused furniture
closeted like unwanted dogs
behind locked doors

The clouds
like charcoal smudges
across a translucent canvas
wallow in their own reverie
hang
then drift eastward
over jade waters churned
by the rebuke of fall’s stiletto winds

South Haven
lives for the drone of motorboats
skiers in tow,
and the background chorus of tourists
in their flip flops and shorts,
hot hands clutching cold drinks
watching their kids scurry to the lake
like berserk lemmings

But as the inevitable cycle
plays itself out,
one last gull paces the beach
looks westward
and anticipates an arduous flight to the sun
as autumn bites
at its wings

MOHAMMED’S MESSENGER

Beneath the cloak,
his upper body is girdled
by a vest ladened with explosives

He meanders through the streets,
each step bringing him closer to martyrdom
 each heartbeat a plea for immortality

His eyes are blurry from the cataracts
of religious zeal that blinds him
from the bleating of children and stoic old women

who are, to him, mere dust particles
in a windstorm of heresy for which
he will mete out their punishment

His thoughts are locked on his reward
of a paradise filled with virgins
awaiting his arrival so that he may

devour the fruits of their chaste innocence.
His faith is as steady as the sun over Mecca
that lights his path to the bosom of Allah,

for he knows there is only one truth:
in the nanno second following his vaporization
he will either be greeted by 72 voluptuous virgins

or devolve into a baleful eternity of blackness.
Either way
he’s fucked

CARIBBEAN REVERIE

From my table outside the café
     I watch two cruise ships snuggle with

the dock at Saint Thomas, as if they were
     enormous dolphins wanting to mate.

A net of vehicles covers the boulevard,
     a languid stream of taxis

hauling red-face tourists to their
     island fantasies, cameras and sunscreen in tow.

I sip my diluted ice tea and watch
     the harbor waters sway with the afternoon breeze,

reflecting cubes of Caribbean sunlight,
     reminding me that it’s February back home.

Back home where it feels like an old man’s frail hand.
Back home where it looks like degraded tintype.
Back home where you can see your breath
but not feel your fingers.

Back home used to be home
when there was family left to cherish
and tomorrows to plot
and lives to share.

Back home has dissolved like the ice in my glass.
     This island is my home now.

This island where I can feel my fingers
and never see my breath,
where my last years are spent leaving footprints
in the sand, as I imagine myself flying with the seagulls,
equatorial currents uplifting my wings.

This island is where I spend shiny afternoons
drinking ice tea and watching the cruise ships
unload their frozen dreamers

MY FRIEND SIG

Sig Sauer  rides next to me
          He rarely ever speaks

And when he finally does
          it’s too late to listen

although he is always
          the last thing you hear

TO MY GRANDCHILDREN

Remember life’s rules,
for they are the pathway
to harmony and fulfillment

Ignore those who say
life is a nightmare, for they
are the ones who have forgotten
how to dream

Bend to no one’s whims and will,
and bend no one to yours

Revere nature and remember
we are part of it--not separate
from it--and that the creations
 of the intellect are as precious
as any mountain peak or
sun-dappled forest

Keep reason as your friend,
logic as your tool,
superstition as your enemy

Keep a safe distance
from the arm of the State, for
at the end of it is an iron fist

While others may seek and demand sacrifice,
revel in life. While others may drop
to their knees in fear of myths,
stand erect and embrace reality

Put your life first, for that
is your highest moral purpose,
but always honor those you hold dear,
for they are the rewards of your humanity

VESPUCCI’S OCEAN

We sail across
     Vespucci’s ocean,
inhaling the salt-ladened
air like frolicking dolphins

as supple as the waves
     we navigate.
They heave and rasp as the
Atlantic rolls like a mariner’s lullaby,

while Cuba crouches
     in the vague distance
like a torpid centipede,
a failing western sun hovering

over its spine. We wrestle
     the undulating sea
doing twenty-four knots at a
longitude beyond our reckoning,

and a latitude
     beyond our scope
sailing somewhere in the domain of
Vespucci’s ocean

　NEW YEARS DAY--2000

　
Above the white-capped roofs

a flock of starlings fly in strict formation

their position and angle subtly shifting

against the pallid sky,

like venetian blinds

adjusting to the light

on New Years Day

                      Two Thousand