Reading
Why did I sit you on my lap
to speak from colored squares,
squawk and hoot and moo to you,
how many times did we end the evening
with so many books splayed across the floor,
half-opened, spines reversed,
commerce halted in suspended breath -
Pompeii on the rug,
by morning, wild disarray,
aftermath of an invader’s attack,
wreckage of a pillaged village,
until one afternoon
I caught sight of you
alone in your room,
back against the blue hassock,
turning slowly a single book’s stiff pages,
I thought –
now you are a reader,
a mariner on a wide whirling ocean,
an aviator climbing an unfurling sky,
an astronaut who treads in galaxies,
now you have joined all of us
who relinquish frozen time
and seek to know
what happens next.
To appear in In Common Things, Shanti Arts Pub. Co.
Proposal
On a Vermont hillside,
her vintage wooden skis, waxed,
mine, rentals with plastic slats,
she made me feel,
as I slipped and fumbled
in my incompleteness,
my wobbly me-ness –
I was enough,
and that I loved her.
At that same spot, I later proposed
what she, with her mom,
had already guessed –
for a moment she swayed,
Give me just a while to own it,
to sight our path ahead.
No photographer behind a tree,
no best friends, parents, siblings, cousins,
stepping over the hillside’s crest,
no rented restaurant, prosecco iced,
just us,
taking the cheapest room in the local inn,
opening a window
to a retaining wall,
counting the dinner’s cost,
making half-panicked love,
then huddling like two sleepy pups,
tired from the day’s full chase,
trusting, with a minimum of guile,
the balance of years would steady us both,
on the track we’d agreed to follow.
Published in Sixfold Winter 2022
Yahrzeit
A grapefruit musk nearly chokes us,
bleeding from the scented wax
that we lit for the yahrzeit candle
we could not find in my daughter’s house,
seven years since my mother’s death,
six weeks since October 7th,
other mothers, other lands are grieved
and grieving this day.
As my daughter and grandchild
sleep on the floor above,
my memories curl
in the tingling air,
the wooden step to reach the sink,
the birthmark on my cheek’s pink moon
you told me God placed there
so you could never lose me,
my nails’ tiny crescents drifting down the drain,
the yellow glittered plastic cup
on the porcelain tub’s back lip
to rinse my shampooed hair,
the lush white towel, embossed with stars,
its half-grooved texture,
moon-face ridges,
warm space to be tucked in,
and when I could not sleep,
your body framed
by moonlight,
my shadowed comfort,
these scented memories,
half reflected dreams,
Ner Adonai nishmat adam
Your light, Adonai, burns in each human soul,
for shadows in a moon of flames,
other mothers, other lands,
those we have lost
and are losing.
Published in Winter Glimmerings, 2024, Orenaug Mountain Pub. Co.
Six Month Cleaning
I don’t care who my dentist is,
my hygienist must be Andrea,
her posture straight, her uniform crisp.
She leads me to her station,
high priestess of hygiene,
I am an acolyte in her mission.
Her light radiates above my head,
my bib, a cleric’s collar,
her dedication to her calling,
the probing, polishing, plaque removal
has the purity of purpose
that summons Galahad or Percival,
her round table of silver instruments,
honed in the heat of holy fire,
flash and dance within her grasp,
her floss glides through each gap,
and as she practices her ordinance,
she talks of the loaves and fishes of her life.
Childless, she loves her rescue dog
who tracks the deer behind her home,
her husband’s loyal hiking mate,
she details his adventures,
the six-foot snake, the coyote pack,
the skunk, the raccoon,
the possum hiding in the grill,
fussed at until her husband
opened the silver doors
and revealed two beady eyes.
Her words are the hymnals of the everyday,
quieting my fretting brain,
in the very month
that my father died,
they point the way
through the forest dark
when the straightforward path
has been lost,
she stands above,
I lie below,
and then I rise, moist-eyed,
renewed, rinsed of sin,
she leads me, posture perfect,
to the check-out station,
somehow, she has turned
my grief to gratitude,
Now the next six months
are up to me.
Published in Sixfold, Winter 2022