poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
Charles Street
That’s me at the door, crying,
watching my mom and her boyfriend
walk across the street to the car.
Maybe I didn’t understand
that she’d be coming back.
Or maybe I understood
that she wouldn’t be.
/ / /
23 July 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem #2 in a new series,
50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing
a poem a day between now and my
50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus
on memories of my past, and the people
who inhabited it.
Watching The Golf
I have the golf on in the background.
This is a very surprising way
for me to begin a poem.
I am not, by nature, a fan.
But the sounds remind me of my grandpa,
who liked nothing better
than to watch the golf
on a weekend afternoon.
Even then, as a kid,
I remember thinking it was boring.
Calming, in its way,
but odd to watch on TV.
He used to play, my grandpa.
He and his friends used to spend
weekends dressed in argyle and knickers,
walking around the manicured courses
of western Massachusetts.
In the few photos I’ve seen
they look very happy.
My grandpa stopped golfing
as a younger man. Maybe my age now.
Which is odd, come to think of it.
During his retirement,
when he had all that free time,
he stopped using it for a thing he loved.
Instead he tuned in and listened
to the whispering men.
My grandpa was a quiet man.
But in those photos he looks different.
He looks like he might have been a man
who liked to laugh, liked to tell jokes,
liked to throw an arm around the shoulders
of another man in knickers.
I think about my grandpa a lot.
About what he knew. And when.
And about why he kept on, and why
he stopped.
/ / /
22 July 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem #1 in a new series,
50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing
a poem a day between now and my
50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus
on memories of my past, and the people
who inhabited it.
Swedish fish
I bought Swedish fish at Wegmans.
Do people still call them that?
The little gummy fish.
Mine are red but they come in other colors.
When I was a kid, my dad would take me
to a little mom-and-pop candy shop.
We’d buy a bag of fish, then go home
to watch the Saturday afternoon monster movie.
Sometimes it would be a classic:
Dracula, The Wolfman, Frankenstein.
More often it was giant irradiated bugs
or a disembodied hand or aliens
who looked goofy even in the 70s.
If I’m honest, I bought the fish tonight
because I miss having parents, but
Swedish fish are no replacement
for a mom and dad.
/ / /
31 May 2023
Charlottesville VA
As the storm starts I press play on the Dave Brubeck album and think of my grandpa. When I was a kid he had a record by the Jack Stewart Quartet, playing Brubeck tunes. They were a band from the Berkshires, where he and I are also from. Half the album was recorded live at a private girls’ school, the other half … I can’t quite recall. Long before I heard the Brubeck originals, I heard these local reproductions, which had the odd effect of making Brubeck seem like the copycat.
thunder drowns the piano
rain on the glass like snares
turntable memories of spring
/ / /
22 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
The end of the line
We crossed this border so many times,
going to visit your family
or returning to our own.
Rather than a river of rapids and rocks,
our crossing was an imaginary line, a sign
sped past at 75 miles per hour.
With this poem I’m erecting a new sign,
painting a fresh imaginary line.
This time I’ll be the only one crossing it.
Across this border is the rest of my life,
all the other poems I’ll write,
all the other places I’ll go.
No more words about you,
no more places seen together.
The clouds will drift over the hills
and I’ll go with them.
/ / /
16 June 2022
Pittsfield MA
Hand-me-downs
The first time I breathed in air,
it was the air of Pittsfield.
My mother took her first lungful
in the same town, as did
my grandfather before her.
I walk from city hall
to the Indian restaurant,
next door to where my grandma
worked in the beauty salon,
although the salon and the
entire department store that housed it
are no more than distant memories,
sand castles swept away
by the tide of urban renewal.
I walk another block past my grandpa’s
high school; I wore his graduation ring
on my pinkie for years,
marveling at his small hands.
My own hands are too big now.
It no longer fits.
/ / /
6 June 2022
Pittsfield MA
Thought process I went through just now:
1. I wonder if I should have a conversation with my sister about what my intentions are when one of our parents dies.
2. I might feel differently about that situation when it actually happens.
3. There’s no need to deal with it until it occurs.
4. That applies to so much of life. Too much planning and overthinking and playing out stories.
5. The better way is clearly just to deal with what’s actually happening right now.
6. That @#$%& Buddhist approach sure does get proved right quite often.
Leave a Comment
In about 1977, my mom bought me a bag of popcorn from this cart, and then we walked into England Brothers department store, in front of which it was parked. There was an escalator, and as my mom and I went up it I was eating fresh popcorn from my bag. Near the top of the escalator I lost my balance and tumbled all the way to the bottom, popcorn flying everywhere.
From that day onward, I could never eat popcorn without feeling nauseous. I tried many times. My family loved popcorn and made it frequently. I tried when I’d go to the movies with friends. Every single time, I’d take a handful and immediately start feeling sick. That lasted until my early 40s, when I ate some popcorn with no ill effects. I can still eat it today, though I spent so many years avoiding it that I usually forget it exists until I go to a movie.
I took the photo above during my lunch break today. I’m not sure if this is the exact same cart or a replica, but it sure looks the same as the one in my memory. I’m also not sure if this cart is still open for business. There was nobody in it today, but perhaps it’s only open on certain days or at certain times. England Brothers, where my grandmother worked for years, was razed during Pittsfield’s urban renewal.
Leave a CommentUnendling
I am the first of my line.
By my own hand I placed
a period on the page.
Taking up the pen again,
I wrote a new name.
Now there are more,
and they will trace back
their names to me.
Our creation story begun
at a dining room table in 1995,
with the unforgiving desert sun
pressing in through the windows.
Look on my works ye mighty
and think whatever you’d like.
I am the first of my line.
/ / /
30 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
(NaPoWriMo Day 30 — Fin!)
Amish chicken
& whoopie pies
country road trip
/ / /
16 April 2022
State College
My Grandfather’s Hands
He could make so many things with his hands.
He made the doors in the house I grew up in.
He crafted the scrimshaw I wore as a kid.
He painted the images that hang on our family’s walls.
He steered the car to my clarinet lessons.
He played the saxophone in the days before I knew him.
Just now I looked down at my own hands,
noticed the deepening lines in my knuckles.
They look more like his hands now.
That’s just a coincidence of aging; it turns out
one of the things he didn’t make was my mom.
But he decided early on to be part of my found family —
before he even knew I’d exist.
I try to make good things with my own hands.
And I do it in memory of him.
/ / /
8 April 2022
Latham NY
(NaPoWriMo Day 8)
Leave a Commentrunning errands
with my son
spring thaw
/ / /
14 March 2022
State College PA
