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Category: My poems

POEM: The Singer & The Hunter

The Singer & The Hunter

cricket in the window well
sings to Orion in the sky
in a language that means “find me”
but the hunter doesn’t answer
and my partner shuts the window

/ / /

27 August 2025
Charlottesville, VA

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POEM: only now

only now

calendar
only now

wristwatch
only now

this moment
only now

drop of rain
only now

cat stretches
only now

steaming ramen
only now

inhale
only now

exhale
only now

no yesterday
only now

no tomorrow
only now

no regrets
only now

no plans
only now

no us
only now

no them
only now

no you
only now

no me
only now

/ / /

23 August 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Stone Angel

Stone Angel

I looked past the stone angel
to the open front door,
saw the back of a recliner
in the living room beyond.
The vice grip of longing:
a little house for us in Lenox,
a cat, a dog, a yard
full of flowers for pollinators.
We’re sipping tea on an autumn morning,
reading our books and chatting.
I don’t even know if that’s what I want.
Not this.
Not this.
Not this.

/ / /

20 August 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Rivers

Rivers

Reading about Paris.
Listening to Boston.
Thinking of Lenox.

I should be present.
Be where I am.
The Rivanna is not the Seine,
but then the Seine is not the Rivanna.

The Housatonic, the Charles,
these rivers of the imagination.
Where are they, really?

Do they flow even now
through this summer night?

/ / /

4 August 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Cartier-Bresson’s Alberto Giacometti Going Out For Breakfast, Paris.

Cartier-Bresson’s Alberto Giacometti
Going Out For Breakfast, Paris
.

He looks like a carved wooden gnome
or a mushroom that might kill you.
The street is so wet from the rain
that he seems to be walking on water,
a hunched savior in search of a
warm baguette and strong coffee.
Even the trees look cold:
thin, exasperated, over it all.
The artist is mid-step,
toes of one foot raised
as if he’s debating whether
to go on or turn back.
The gray and the rain are strong.
The stomach is stronger.
It’s this, just this,
then back to the tiny studio
crammed wall to wall
with imagination realized;
electricity in the brain transferred
to the hands, to the clay,
to each of us admirers.
But first, coffee.

/ / /

22 July 2025
Charlottesville VA

In the latest Staple Day newsletter from Field Notes, they included a link to a photo and an essay about Alberto Giacometti. It inspired this poem, which I of course wrote in my Field Notes notebook (below). The world is so full of inspiration and I love having a notebook in which to capture it.

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POEM: Defensive Errors

Defensive Errors

They make us hate each other
to distract us from hating them.
There are about 3,000 billionaires
and more than 8 billion regular folks.
Math isn’t my strong suit
but I think we can take ’em.

/ / /

7 July 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: For one year, I danced

For one year, I danced

Overalls on, one strap down,
triangle pendant swinging,
shining in the club lights.
I moved across the floor
to Andy Bell’s angelic voice,
drawn toward the sound
of the closet door opening.

For one year, I made a new me,
one with fewer boundaries,
with more possibilities,
with a rainbow aura
wreathing my head.
I drew the eyes of men.
I felt the hands of women.
I did not have the words.
I knew them anyway.

At dinner with my cousin
on the way out west,
I handed her a box
containing my new heart.
She held onto it for thirty years,
until I found the key and
unlocked it again.
“Always” by Erasure poured out.
Again, I danced.

/ / /

29 June 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Alvin, Simon, Theodore

Alvin, Simon, Theodore

I can’t remember
what your voice sounds like, but that’s OK:
I forget what my voice sounds like, too.
I used to have a tape of my first radio job.
My grandpa made it on the boom box
he kept beside his easy chair.
I always joke that I sounded like one of the Chipmunks.
What I really sounded like was a kid.
Twenty-one, no clue what was coming,
only a dim understanding of what had already passed.
Anyway, I’m writing all this
because I found a recording of you.
I didn’t recognize your voice at all.

/ / /

19 June 2025
Charlottesville, VA

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POEM: Miserere

Miserere

In the background of this poem:
Allegri’s Miserere.
The soft singing of five voices,
turned down too low to hear clearly.

Moments ago in a book
I learned of the existence of this piece,
stolen by Mozart’s brain from the Vatican;
transcribed and given to all of us

in a courageous act of defiance,
or perhaps just a thumbing of the nose
at the cassocked voices of denial.

Now coming through a USB speaker
attached by light waves to a laptop
and, as has been previously stated,
turned down too low to appreciate.

We shrink our miracles
until they no longer scare us.

/ / /

16 June 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Field notes

Field notes

The desire to open the notebook,
to mark the pages with graphite.
To mark. To leave a mark.
Tangible evidence of the poet.
Poetry as proof of life.
In the hostage photo:
today’s paper.
At the bottom of the poem:
today’s date.
Poem as ransom note —
no amount specified.
Pay and pay until God
or fate or blind dumb luck
sets free the captive.
The sweet release of …
death?? life?
Graphite alone can’t say.

/ / /

15 June 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Known/Unknown

Known/Unknown

There’s a photo of the filing cabinet
on the front of the filing cabinet.
We listened, on the way to the cemetery,
to a big band play the songs of other big bands.
Everything is sincerely flattering.
This is where I’m from but I can’t prove it.
I’m not in any of the pictures.
Now though, Shawnee at The Bookstore
knows my name, knows my face.
At this point, it’s just her and the undertaker.
That feels like it means something.

/ / /

10 June 2025
Charlottesville VA
(but set in Lenox, MA)

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POEM: Last Hurrah At The Stevens Motel

Last Hurrah At The Stevens Motel

Every expense was spared
at the Stevens Motel.
No art in the room.
Overhead florescent light.
One malfunctioning lamp by the bed.
One interrogation lamp on the desk.
When my former sorta-in-laws stayed here
I thought it was quaint.
Doing it alone is … grim.
Kelly asked if this would be
my last trip to State College.
That hadn’t even occurred to me,
but maybe?
What a gift that would be.
It’s taken me years to survive this town.
To reclaim some of what it stole.
As I watch my son get ready to leave,
I hope his mom will follow,
so none of us need ever come back.

/ / /

17 May 2025
State College PA

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POEM: On the same day I learned my aunt would likely die

On the same day I learned my aunt would likely die

On the same day I learned
my aunt would likely die,
I sent a photo of my cat and me
to my mom – the first text in years.
I couldn’t tell you why,
other than I’m not as angry as I was
and my cousin is about to lose
her second parent in a month.
Maybe rage and love must balance
for my universe to exist,
some mathematical equation
I feel without understanding.
I’ve never been good at math
but I’ve always been good at feeling.
I’m like a reverse Matt Damon in that movie
whose title, of course, I know.
I’m being poetic.
Anyway my mom responded
with a photo of their cats.
Then my cousin said it’s close.
Alex Bregman hit a home run.
I breath in, try to feel the math.

/ / /

14 May 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Deluge

Deluge

It’s been raining for 24 hours,
so long the water has won
its battle over caulk
and now my cat is mesmerized
by the drops and streams
running down the bedroom wall.
I hurry to save photos
I’ve stuck up with Blu-Tack:
the only photo of my father;
my grandmother, young and coiffed;
me as a baby
against a portrait studio backdrop.
As the water drips and pools,
my body remembers a night in the van
when hours of rain exposed
a slow leak in the ceiling,
right above my cot.
There was nowhere else to lie
in those 32 square feet.
On this night I wad up a towel
at the base of the wall,
send a text to the landlord,
try to ignore the dripping.
It takes a long time
for sleep to come.

/ / /

13 May 2025
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Ash And Stone

Ash And Stone

Perhaps even the abuse
was the best they could do.
We are none of us prepared
to shepherd a helpless life,
to watch it grow beyond us
while still needing – or worse,
not needing – our guidance.
I tended the fires of rage
until my heart ran out of fuel,
until in the ashes that remained
I found a stone that was
warm to the touch, and silent.

/ / /

11 May 2025
Charlottesville, VA

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