Skip to content →

Category: Massachusetts

POEM: Our Bodies, Ourselves

Our Bodies, Ourselves

I came back from a week in Plymouth,
where my grandparents had been plying me
with Ring Dings and unlimited TV.
I got out of their car and saw
the look of horror on my mom’s face.
Every night for weeks she made me
jog around our neighborhood
to lose the weight I’d gained on the trip.
I was six, maybe seven, years old.
I finished lunch before writing this.
I logged every calorie into an app.
In six weeks I’ll be 50.
It never goes away.

/ / /

28 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 7 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.

Leave a Comment

haiku: Tanglewood Evening

Tanglewood Evening

on the lawn our attention
drawn to one woman coughing
as the pianist plays

***

four low voices slip
across the manicured grass
a warbler enters from the trees

***

air heavy with citronella
the pop of a cork
during the applause

***

a lone student’s violent end
transformed into melody
all breaths are held

///

Bastille Day
14 July 2022
Ozawa Hall lawn
Tanglewood
Lenox MA

Leave a Comment

haiku: 13 July 2022

sunlight on the water
children’s laughter
Fleetwood Mac vs Kane Brown

/ / /

13 July 2022
Onota Lake
Pittsfield MA

Leave a Comment

POEM: Fitchburg Metta Sutta

Fitchburg Metta Sutta

Kannon Bodhisattva looks down on my van
as I pass below an outcrop of rock
so I do a u-turn & head back for a visit.
The Vietnamese Buddhist temple sits on a steep
hill overlooking a small post-industrial town
somewhere near the middle of Massachusetts.
A journey of two thousand five hundred years
from India to China to Vietnam to the U.S.
ends in the driveway of a 19th-century house
that’s been put to a new use.
Kannon is the embodiment of compassion;
a being who has reached enlightment
but has chosen instead to stay here
with the rest of us until we can go, too.
That kind of work needs to be done everywhere,
& Fitchburg, Mass. is as good as anywhere else.
I walk around the building taking photos
of the statues & the flowers & the signs
(none of which I can read) & then I stop
& bow before Kannon to show my respect
& because I could use some compassion.
A light rain begins to fall.

/ / /

6 July 2022
Pittsfield MA

Leave a Comment

haiku: 2 July 2022

I save my place
in a dead poet’s words
with a goose’s lost feather

/ / /

2 July 2022
Wahconah Falls State Park
Dalton MA

Leave a Comment

haiku: 1 July 2022

black squirrel on the trail
surfaces distant memories
of summer in Japan

/ / /

1 July 2022
Appalachian Trail
near Dalton MA

Leave a Comment

haiku: 30 June 2022

little bag of popcorn
on a bench under a tree
no I don’t know which kind

/ / /

30 June 2022
Pittsfield MA

Leave a Comment