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