poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
New Pope
The new pope is an old white dude.
I mean they’re usually old white dudes.
He once said social media causes the gay.
I’m paraphrasing.
The new pope was born in Chicago.
Might have grown up a Cubs or a White Sox fan.
Eating deep dish, listening to the blues.
Probably not the blues thing, though.
The new pope looked kinda stunned on TV.
Maybe he was thinking:
“We’re still doing this shit?”
He looked as good in the hat as anyone.
His Italian sounded OK to me
but then again I don’t speak Italian.
The new pope is infallible now, I guess.
That’ll make Vatican trivia night easier.
/ / /
8 May 2025
Charlottesville VA
in the air (Wed 1:23 PM)
a cardinal, who then swoops
low over the grass
smoke from two sticks of Japanese incense
burning in an ash-filled Mason jar
the sound of Scott Robinson’s bari sax
with the New Art Orchestra
two little brown birds (maybe house sparrows)
heading for the empty feeders
a mid-sized jet
bound for Charlotte NC
the voice of a work at the perpetually
under-construction house next door
birdsong
so much birdsong
a truck engine
on the busy road nearby
one slowly descending maple leaf
a sense of anticipation
oh, and a hawk
/ / /
7 May 2025
Charlottesville VA
flipping
flipping through
Patrick Heron’s paintings
on my phone
I think:
perhaps these aren’t for me
before I slap myself
across the face of my mind
and remember:
I haven’t seen them yet
/ / /
6 May 2025
Charlottesville VA