Truro Sunset

When it drops below the water
that’s only the beginning.
Musical notes drop and drift
like layers upon layers of clouds glowing

and the foam on the crest
of the waves are even whiter
than the corners of your eyes.

Sky blue pink, but there’s more than that
more than the last licks of
the fire hat of the sky.

There were seven kings of Rome
your dad tells me.
Here we sit the four of us
watching night arrive, silent
as the common man.

Hubbard Park At Dusk

Here I sit with the melting sky,
the sun sunken behind bald mountains,
the trees: just sticks I can see through,
the screams and laughter and stomping feet of the boys behind me
and the light fading imperceptibly so

and somehow I know
that each tall pine standing in a circle around me
appreciates the sound of the children's laughter
piercing the silence
ever so shockingly often.

If a Moment

If a moment could stretch
into a day, a year, a lifetime,
let it be that moment in the orchard,
where the blue of your eyes
matched the blue of the sky,
and the red cheek of the apple matched
my smile, and we kissed and touched and
walked the whole length of the
row of trees hand in hand, and
the ground became the sky became the sun
became the invisible stars that look so much like
the pinpoints of light on the apple
I hold out to you in amazement.

Sleepy and Septembery

a fall poem written hastily
at work
on a computer
yes, there’s a window next to my screen
yes, I see the faint outline of Camel’s Hump
on the horizon through fog
yes, I hear clicking keyboards
and squeaks of chairs
yes, I have a florescent light shining overhead
and people talking over my head
and so this is a fall of sorts:
a fall of beautiful surroundings
a fall of my freedom to create
a fall of my heart into his
a falling away from this dullness
that has been filling my days
making me sleepy
making me miss
wispy Septembery days

Letter to my Country in the Middle of the Night:

No, I am not afraid
to walk down the deserted street
of a beach vacation town
in the middle of the night.

I’m not afraid. I am comfortable.

I am lost in a sea, a sea of
mediocrity, of sameness, of states
joined together by the dotted lines of
Wal-Marts and McDonalds on the map.

My dear country who has raised me
to be so unafraid and free: Do you see me
sitting here in filth?

Don’t you see that “Farm-to-Table”
is not just another corporate marketing ploy
to generate a profit? Don’t you see that
I am lonely, too?

I am grateful to glide through your land
unscathed, my dear country, but please
just look at me. Look at me and see me.
Then maybe I won’t be so lost and lonely
on your shores.

"You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone." - Miller Williams.

You do not know
what to do
about your mother who
all your life
has been a sort of kept woman.
You do not know
except you do.
You get identical
headaches
you stay up late
you swear at your
child in the same
breath you tell him
you love him.
You search and
search in all the dumbest
places for love:
at the bar
on-line
driving past cars in traffic
(you look, you can't help it)
all the while
the love you seek
is right here
down at the sinew
the spirit and the bone
your own blood
your flesh and smile
burned like snapshots
on your brain.

Mud Season

Vermont, April 2010 marks the anniversary
of my son’s birth. I spread his eight years on the table
as if he could be measured or given monetary
value. Someone has to write the fable

of his life and keep it like a promissory note.
Someone has to witness the new leaf
on the maple, tote
around the vision, tinged with the belief

that symbiosis is prone to etiolate
the mother. The boy, flippant as a magazine.
Of course I chose to germinate, to create.
But who tells you motherhood is like the metabolic catalyst Tetrazene?

These eight years my body feels the slake
of the turning of baby to boy to grown man. A solemn
memory, his body in mine, I take
with me in my cells. His life, this spring, rises like a column

from the mud: full of grit
and wet black Earth. I’m bound
to get stuck. May as well tie me to the spit
and roast me. Listen to the sound.

Recycled

Spring has sprung.
The same road
carves out
the dull path
you take through landscapes
daily.
Hidden
broken
things are
revealed in spring.
Chunks of asphalt
wind-strewn limbs.
In between
Not a Thru Street
(but a blur of rain)
and Easy St.
a man
checks his mail
sifts
through stark white
pieces
of unwanted
information
quickly calculates
what he’ll keep
what he’ll recycle.

From Hunger Mountain Journal: Congratulations also to runner-up Samantha Kolber of Montpelier, Vermont for “Jewel Tones,” a Pantoum (in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the following stanza.)

“One of the many difficulties of writing in strict form is the pitfall of allowing the form of the poem to take over the content or the intention of the poet,” writes Matthew Dickman. “In “Jewel Tones” we see the opposite: A poet utilizing the form to carry the very human desire of the person writing it.”

Please check the website of Hunger Mountain Journal for my poem, Jewel Tones, to be published there soon: www.hungermtn.org

Dear Matthew: A Ghazal

Remember me, remember me: it’s what any woman wants.
Between night & sleep your arm hooks around my waist but I want the security of your days.

Days dragged out in quiet inner longings. Do you meditatate on the curve of my hips?
I want to know you might even smile when you think of me.

I want to know you know me as well as your hands know how to hold me,
That your heart and mind pin me down as hard.

We don’t do lovemaking, most of the time it’s just sex.
Skin on skin, the smell of you: I can get drunk on less than this.

Enough wine and your whispering in my ear all the desires of your cock
I might just believe it feels something like love.

I want to tell you everything I know.
Lives invisible live within these walls
Yet they hold me, and that is what I know.
They hold my books, my poems, family portraits,
Blankets, a couch, an unplayed guitar: All
the things I think I need to live a life.
And that is what I know. To live one's life
Between walls, among things. Comfort. Luxuries.
I dip Oreos in milk; the wind howls.
Winter screeches past my door and I am warm
Inside, while outside, the almost full moon,
With its cold face, stares down the snowy ground.
It's all I know: to watch with rapture at
The seasons, to listen and think each car
That squeals by or parks in front of my house
Is him, coming to tell me he loves me.
But it's not him. It's just me. And the wind.
Cookies & milk. These four walls I call home.