Galaxies

I saw a galaxy in your eyes

Of laughs and hopes of dreams and sighs

Where mountains rise from ocean depths

And the Milky Way sweeps celestial breadths

Then looking down at humbled feet

I viewed this fern that so repeats

And found among my toes at play

The wonders of the everyday.

The Storm

Leaves are plastered against the windows of a black Jeep
Just beginning to curl-dry at the edges
Green lips asking
For another chance
But no, it’s done…done-done
And with its brethren
They course down the drive in the run-off tsunami to
The gutter to the grate
Water working-working and moving
Driven solemnly and gaily to gravity’s grave
(So long it’s been good to know ya)
Sorting the chaos into streams of the fallen… no one will soon care about
Until next time.
And there will be a next time after the sorting-sorting
Some things stay while others are dispatched to parts unknown
And here-after.
We are surprised by the toughness of it all
Ya we took that shot
But still standing, (a few leaning)
Us tough knots
We have weathered another one
This one
Somewhat re-arranged
And maybe just a little changed.

The Day After Peace

The day after peace
We walked the grounds and surveyed the
Remnants newly disassociated
Spilled blood and wine equally evaporated
The transition was fast and tinny hollow.
It had always been such a struggle
Noble but in a self-righteous way
Like the first solo on a bicycle
Look at me see what I have done
But then on the day after all there is left is the riding
This quest complete yet ringing hollow somehow
Leaving nothing gallant to strive and embrace
No shining city on the hill
Nothing left but the churning and the beginning

White Bread and Burnt Toast

I’ve had another birthday
And I find myself somewhere between white bread
And burnt toast
Still edible but maybe not palatable?
Scrape a bit over the sink
Looking for salvage…salvation
Maybe something's still there
All carbon based…
The beets from the market look on
Then quickly looks away
They had their day bright and leafy
Now wilted limp of leaf
Hoping that the flesh of the root
That stains fingertips burgundy

Might still make a meal that one could sit down to.

First Drops

Low hanging, the grey-yellow clouds still the dry churning air,
Waiting for the splat of fat drops…
Momentarily, great globs are flung earthward
Cold and icy like asteroids from somewhere above and beyond
Forming wet craters in the dust, pock-marking mud
Cars wheeling through the puddled wet pavement sing in choral harmonies,
Vapors waft into the branches above,
Leaves turning slowly on their stems, wave hello-goodbye
A cloud-curtain rises on the near horizon revealing a stub of a rainbow.
In the distance the dinner bell rings punctuated by boy’s voices and bicycles chains clanging
Sounding through the distant throaty roar of construction equipment,
Home is dog fur newly wetted, bejeweled grass clippings, slumping cardboard boxes,
And the lawn sprinkler still running.

Blood and Cement

This poem is made of concrete.
Surely who I am today is at least in part due
To the long hot dusty days
    Spent by my dad Ernie
     Back from the war
     Behind the wheel of a cement truck,
     Browned left elbow hanging out the driver’s side window.
     You’ve seen these trucks on the road and at construction sites
     Monster-looking vehicles with their spinning bellies loaded…
And also due to the years he spent running the batch plant
     A giant industrial blender for mixing a slate-colored batter of Portland cement
     With limestone gravel
     (He used to bring home ones with sea bottom fossils-I wish I still had them-)
     And cool brown sand
     All by the ton,
     Wet with icy artesian water.
Such is cement.
And there were many days spent after work
     -Side jobs- forming the walks and ways,
     Pouring the cement and raking the oozing mounds flat
     Then bull floating the eddies of wet heavy slop smooth
     Edging and troweling driveways, patios, and carports.
I was there, in sneakers with cement crusted toes
     Back then in America,
     Back in a land that was paved with man made conglomerate rock.
We were getting ahead.
I knew because
His dry cracked hands held the paychecks.
His hair was dusted a gritty theatrical grey
His bald spot protected from the sun by a straw
“Go to hell hat”
His arms and neck branded red by the high Ohio summer blaze,
Forming a negative-white
T-shirt on his skin.
He worked for us
And in his way, made a better life for me and my brothers.
So I went to college, got an education
In part so I didn’t have to labor my whole life long
(Although we did our share off and on, in the construction trades)
And when I came home on school vacations
I could always smell the sweat and concrete in his grey-stained coat
And feel his raw parched hand, desiccated by lime,
Placed gently on my shoulder…
It was a part of him, this rock and dust
And it is part of me
This mix of blood and cement,
Passed from father to son.