poetry

How odd.
At your age, I was married
with you in the crib.

But here
we sit across the table
chewing grown-up tidbits,
and I

hunger
back to this same table top
when you blinked at my tricks.
Pennies

vanished
before your wide-eyed trust.
simple trust in Daddy's clumsy
magic.

"Do it
again, please Daddy", you pleaded,
from an early version of you.
The coins,

of course,
slid under a napkin.
"Look over there." You looked that way
and poof!

But now
no such magic will turn your eye
since past the napkin you see
me a

wizard unclothed.No cape, no smoke, wearing sleeveless tricks like you.

Not a smile, exactly.
More like puckering rhubarb
before sugar,
first one thing,then the other.

After second helpings on the green beans,
a message begins to slip and slide.
Your eyes rehearse a speech
hidden there.

"Your daughter and I began engagement counseling on Tuesday."

The room gains heat.
My eyes grasp
a plate to hang on to

Afternoon.
After dinner trimmed with spring.
After sleepy sit-and-talk.
After all that.

Run.
Run when April's ragged breeze
flags a flying football
air-borne.
Snag it.

Winged feet
land satisfied,
shuffling home.

Played after dark melted a sun down
and traded lazy stories

That's why we sail
intently.
to take sundown as a word,
to hear the silent speech.

The water darkens thick,
going from green to gray to carbonate,
curved and deep.

We straddle this wind machine,
ghosting on ripples, and
holding the leeward bending puffs.

On a reach, the hull fairly planes.

You and I lean and look
at spar and sail, and just beyond,
the night light.
"What if," you smile,
"We sailed her to the moon?"

Fading forlorn down the cold, clogged alleyway,
Mister Nowhere spits defiance into a crumbled cavern
near a greasy rat.

Someone's Onetime sits matted,weary,
slumped starving on asphalt sofa.
Her glazed eyes leering non-plus.

Any evening's social club there'd be social sipping.
Supper served from Ripple chalices.
Then bedded down in deathly cardboard
palaces.

Reeling damp smells of hopelessness.
Memories confess like billowing sand:
Once a papa's baby blond
kept warm in arms long gone.

Soft in the sliding winter sun,
Sheep Mountain calls out,
"Welcome boys."

Waltzing upward,
Paul partners a willow that
dances gingerly on the frozen ballroom.

"Careful," I cry,
"That pitch dies above.Try it
over there."

On top,the ridge falls into the winking
valley. Between ponderosas,
a bosky Christmas Eve.

Down through the dark we slide,
wild, like blind tight-rope walkers
circusing.

Walter leans gaunt against the window.
His eyes wonder along the foothills and the
far-flung city.

Walter turns intent.
It is his first book and each day,
"Five hundred words or three hours,whatever comes first."

Walter's eyelids dewlap around
shimmering eyes,
Like a newborn.

So long ill,
Walter leans into words

A song happens when
stuff stirs inside
to flood the heart and
ebb the hiding.

Then a simple tune
or pulse, beats the
harmony
that smiles or weeps

clean with salted air,
unspotted,
air sublime to
sweet what rots.

A song waves on
simplicity,
never changes,
always changing.