night bugs
can’t drown out
Red Sox loss
/ / /
1 September 2023
Charlottesville VA
Category: Poetry
Such Great Heights
I should have gone with you.
I know that now.
I knew it then, too,
but lacked the courage.
My son is coming to visit.
I think you’d like him.
Yours is old enough to vote now.
I know him only as
an infant in a car seat
at the airport departure gate.
It’s Friday afternoon.
I’m playing
“Such Great Heights”
by The Postal Service
on my radio show.
Remember when you
sent me that song?
It was many years after we’d met.
We got as far as planning to meet again
until you changed your mind
and retreated into silence.
Everything looks perfect from far away.
/ / /
1 September 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 42 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a Commentfighting
the box fan—
loud cricket
/ / /
31 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
Ink
He pedaled his bike from the rented house
to the tattoo shop.
He was 35 years old.
He rode past the shop, went up a couple blocks.
Turned around.
Rode back, but out of sight of the big window.
Took a deep breath. Went in.
He showed the tattoo artist what he wanted.
A bicycle chain wheel with a peace sign
inside it: the Peace Cog.
“No problem,” said the artist.
Tommy, his name was.
Tommy went into the back.
The 35-year-old with his bare arms
waited on a vinyl chair,
back to the big window
and the traffic on the street outside.
After a few minutes Tommy returned,
the design drawn on a tissue-thin paper.
“Come on back,” Tommy said.
*
Later, at the union hall, a young coworker
spotted the ink on his forearm.
“Dude, did you get a tattoo?”
He felt … was it cool? Was he cool?
“Yeah,” he said.
/ / /
31 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 41 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a CommentReferences
Another life:
We’re riding our
Jetson-y bubble bikes,
singing along to
“Detachable Penis”
and “Particle Man,”
quoting Python
and Grosse Pointe Blank.
Yes, I would like
fries with that.
/ / /
30 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 40 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a Commentold pond
old frog
waiting
/ / /
30 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
Long Distance
I came home from Japan a month early.
A grand surprise.
James picked me up at the airport.
We drove through town.
He pointed out the new post office,
the new Wegmans.
He took me to your house
before he took me home.
Your mom answered the door,
called you down from your room.
As soon as I saw your face,
I knew it was over.
/ / /
29 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 39 in a series called 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 Commentawaiting the summer rain:
a stick shaped
like a bird’s foot
/ / /
28 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
Chance Encounter
I met him in the park
where you asked me
to marry you.
I was in a camping chair
behind my van,
reading.
He was passing by
on one of the park’s
walking paths.
The rear door of my van
(the van I moved into
after you met someone else)
was open,
and the bed and stove
caught his eye as he passed.
He stopped to talk,
asking about my travels,
what I had seen
and where I had slept
and how I kept alive;
everyone’s questions.
We exchanged numbers
for some reason,
and I stopped going
to that park,
the park where you asked me
to marry you,
before you met someone else.
/ / /
28 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 38 in a series called 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 CommentAncestry
To go down into the mine
again and again,
searching for one more seam,
one more rich vein.
To walk the dark tunnels
deeper and deeper,
until daylight fades behind
like a rumor.
To hear the trickling water
drip and drip,
making the way treacherous,
slick, unforgiving.
To chip away at the walls,
harder and harder,
until the dust
defies breathing.
To return to the surface,
levels and levels,
clutching a meager find,
holding it up to the light.
/ / /
27 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 37 in a series called 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 Commenta spider probes
the dishtowel
doesn’t offer to dry
/ / /
27 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
Mr. W
We all piled out of the plane at Narita,
taking our first steps into the mystery.
A few spoke some Japanese;
most, like me, not a word.
Then suddenly he was there,
quick and powerful and suave,
a smile permanently lurking
just behind his eyes.
He showed us how to use a payphone
so we could tell our parents we’d lived.
“Last call for a month,” he reminded us.
Then it was buses, if memory serves.
Taneen would remember.
Anyway, it was a long trip north
to a hotel in Sendai, where
the next morning a series
of curious families would try
to identify us from the one photo
they’d each been sent.
Halting conversations,
mispronounced names,
then helping us into cars
or onto trains with our suitcases
and our wide-eyed stares.
Mr. W watched over it all,
nodding at the right places,
stepping in to translate,
making sure each of us felt cared for.
Later he’d party with us
and dance and sing songs
and watch us eat soba
till a couple of us puked.
We were all thousands of miles
from our fathers, but he made it feel
like no distance at all.
/ / /
26 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
For Wakabayashi-san, who passed away recently and who was the guardian and guide to so many Rotary exchange students in northern Japan. Arigatou gozaimashita.
This is poem 36 in a series called 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.
One CommentAfter Jack
You start with the legs crossed
or kneeling or sitting in a chair
with your hands just so or no
particular way at all.
The breath comes slow, deep
or else it doesn’t: who’s to say?
In the brain an alto sax plays
and then Pedro strikes a guy out
and then there was that one time
you told someone how you felt
and it didn’t go well
and then something is scuttling
through the leaves outside
and then you think of calling her
or think of writing to them
and then dinner tonight,
maybe try the Indian place?
Oh that’s right
you’re supposed to be breathing.
I mean you ARE breathing
otherwise there’d be a whole new
set of problems but you’re not
paying attention and really
attention is where it’s at,
where it’s all it’s at, as
Lenny stumbled that one time
after he’d taken up lecturing
rather than bits.
Breathing, right, you won’t forget
again
but you will probably because
today the zoo is full of little imps
and they love jumping
on the Samsonite of your memories
and then there was the time
you took the dog back
because it bit a kid in the neighborhood,
busted right through the door
and chased the kids around and got one
and then you think of the way
they asked if you ever expected to be
with someone like them
and how that question has never quite
sat right, you know? and yet
you did expect it
but now it’s over and it always
comes back to that in the end doesn’t it
the overness of it all and then
you remember to breathe.
/ / /
25 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 35 in a series called 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 CommentBut I Am Your Child
My father never looked for me.
In more than 30 years he never wrote,
never called, never
showed up outside my school
or at my job,
never spotted me through a fence
playing with my sons at the park.
It’s been four years and my parents
are clearly content
to let this silence stretch
into permanence,
to hold on to the other child
and pretend she was the first
and only.
/ / /
24 August 3023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 34 in a series called 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.
A Journey Of 1,000 Miles
My first guest was a nun.
I hadn’t talked to one
since the second grade.
It was for a 5-minute feature
on people doing good work
in Rochester, New York.
I was in a studio, she
was on the phone.
As soon it was over,
I pressed a button
and erased the whole thing.
I broke out in a sweat.
Took a few deep breaths.
Then I called her back
and asked if she’d do it again.
Sure, she said, I think
I can do it better anyway.
/ / /
23 August 2023
Charlottesville NY
This is poem 33 in a series called 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