porch thoughts
pencil and tea
cicadas chime in
/ / /
6 September 2025
Charlottesville VA
Category: Poem-A-Day 2025
the rainbow I want to see
forms in a puddle of gasoline
pooling below a row of Molotov cocktails
a riot not a parade
they’re not coming for us
they’re already here
that warmth you feel
is the breath of the enemy
uniformed like a dark patch of night
light glinting off a truncheon
grab a brick, break a bottle
sharpen your knives and axes
this is the hour when we fight
/ / /
6 September 2025
Charlottesville
cool salmon, warm daal
on my neck:
September breeze
/ / /
2 September 2025
Charlottesville VA
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
the eternal debate:
whether or not they’ll split
a quiche
/ / /
25 August 2025
Marie Bette
Charlottesville VA
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
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