poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
close
every encounter is a mixture
of delight and regret
I’m pushing the big rock
up a steep hill
am I strong enough to let go?
will it roll over me?
my headphones block the sound of the train
as it carries me fa(r)ther away
past a hundred rectangles
divided into a thousand rectangles
I turn on Coltrane, sit back
watch the blurry trees
/ / /
19 April 2025
Washington D.C.
all aboard
a train is a good place
to write a poem
even a train that hasn’t left yet
is full of possibility
a train puts me at ease
no traffic, no tolls
no need to navigate
just ride the rails
until you get to your station
it’s a terrible metaphor for life
but my favorite way to travel
/ / /
19 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
mayflies
mayflies dead on the streets of Selma
mayflies dead on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
David and I are there to remember
to pay our respects, to see
but everywhere we look
the streets and sidewalks are covered
with drifts of mayfly carcasses
heaps of translucent white wings
uncountable numbers of corpses
we try not to step on them
it’s all but impossible
we walk with a sickening crunch
across that weighty bridge
emerging on the other side
two white people unscathed
on a field of the dead
/ / /
18 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
this place is nowhere
I have learned nothing
about this place
I know the route from home to work
from home to Wegmans
from home to downtown
when my partner drives back
to their other place
I don’t know which direction they go
most days I seem to be floating
like Fenchurch in the Adams book
never quite touching the ground
today someone from afar
told me I’m flourishing
my sister says my life is stable
my kids, well, I’m never sure about them
but me? I’m here but not here
like a main street façade
built for a movie
it looks real if you don’t get too close
don’t peek around the back
don’t see the beams
propping up the illusion
I’m a dusty western town
tumbleweeds blowing through
a short hop from the highway
that goes everywhere and nowhere
/ / /
17 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
abracadabra
no matter how many times I hear
the magic trick that was Art Tatum
I can never figure out how he did it
how his mind leapt as if he’d never
heard of the law of gravity
how his fingers found all those keys
with no eyes to guide them
how he took songs everybody knew
and blasted them into a million
glittering jewels of sound
he had an arm up each sleeve
with miraculous hands at the ends
here I sit, mouth open in wonder
grateful just to listen
/ / /
14 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
Dishwasher At The Barricades
I made the mistake
of listening to headlines
while I washed the dishes tonight.
I’d been proud of myself
for washing them
rather than just getting into bed.
By the time I finished
I was enraged,
my heart pounding in my chest.
The antithesis of meditation.
It’s the Frodo Baggins of it all:
living through times
I’d have rather avoided,
chest full of a heart
that can’t look away.
I’m too cowardly for the big things.
I let my bosses silence me.
I hide behind the age-old fear
of getting yelled at.
I’m not a Willem van Spronsen.
Not an Alexander Berkman.
My hands shake
as I rinse the last glass,
set it rim-side-down
on the pile of clean dishes
in the drying rack.
I turn off the podcast
so I can write this poem.
/ / /
4/7/25
Charlottesville VA
dawn chorus
we’ve sung for them
for a thousand years
but they’ve never
learned the words
/ / /
5 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
the mysterious valley
there’s a mysterious valley
behind Lisa
I hadn’t noticed it until today
I guess I was too distracted
by the smile we’re told to look at
but there it is –
a path and a bridge
some mountains fading into mist
while Lisa sits there
daring us to look past her
/ / /
4 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
For John Breen
We’ll probably never know what he did
when he was overseas in a uniform.
He kept most of that pretty close to the chest.
In fact he kept most things pretty close to the chest.
He was a classic man of his era.
He served, he worked, he did what was required.
I once watched him eat two slices of pizza
and wash them down with a full glass of milk.
He was, if memory serves, the only person I ever knew
who preferred Wonder Bread to all other kinds.
I sat at his table one afternoon,
having decided to unburden my emotions
to this least likely of hearers.
When I was done, he told me
to get my head out of my ass.
He wasn’t wrong.
/ / /
31 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
For my Uncle John,
who passed away on
March 29, 2025.
hush
a carpenter bee inspects the bird feeder
across the street, a neighbor mows short grass
there’s a woodpecker knocking in a tree behind me
the cat jumps up to say hi then bites my hand
I saw a video once about a man
who finds the last quiet places
I haven’t seen him around here
/ / /
28 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
Fred Astaire’s Sister
The crossword puzzle book –
which, let’s be honest,
is already a pretty old place to start –
has a clue asking for the name
of Fred Astaire’s sister.
As I pencil in ADELE,
I get that cozy feeling
that comes from a warm fire
on a snowy day
with an old movie playing.
There’s something oddly comforting
about knowing Fred’s sister’s name,
as there is about knowing Fred himself.
I was born in the era of record players
housed in credenzas, grew up
in the era of cassette tapes and then CDs,
and watched my kids come of age
at a time when every song ever recorded
is available at the touch of a pretend button.
But now it’s Sunday afternoon,
I’m listening to Horowitz on vinyl,
penciling in the name
of Fred Astaire’s sister,
and happy to be spanning the ages
with my wonder still intact.
/ / /
25 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
Carrying A Pencil
“I got me an Altoids can
and one of these pencil sharpeners here
German pencil sharpeners
M&R
and these are great,
little $8, heavy, brass pencil sharpener
and I would carry these daily
that’s a lot
then I finally wised up
and went with the mechanical pencil here.”
/ / /
24 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
From this video by Coty Black
Buttered Toast
for Denise
I eat buttered toast
and think of my aunt
who is actually my cousin,
who almost certainly
wouldn’t know me
if she saw me today,
not because I’ve changed –
though I have –
but because her mind
has exchanged the present
for the hazy glow of the past,
where we all sit
around the dining room table
while the future
stretches out forever,
golden.
/ / /
22 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
The Process Of Warping Prevention
Hammer in
the warp stopper.
Over the years of use
this will prevent the object
from bowing
under the weight of the world.
Make sure it has
just enough grog
to give it tooth.
It’s not necessary
to know what that means
as long as you’re
careful to do it.
At 12,500 feet
below sea level
your lungs will collapse,
so stay out
of the deep end.
The two white women
want to take a cruise.
The two black men
have no place to hang out.
/ / /
21 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
Glass House
There’s an upside-down house
in the pond outside the cafe.
A squad of geese in tight formation
fly over (under?) it then
disappear beyond leafless trees.
The glass-smooth pond waits
for the return of its winged tenants.
Spring has called them north,
back across the imaginary border
recognized only by us,
discomfited as we are
by the idea of freedom.
/ / /
15 March 2025
Ruckersville VA