The Man Without a Home: A Poem

He emerged on the horizon

Of a crumbling walk

And paused

To swab his feet.

They were caked in dirt

And bleeding.

 

When I asked why,

He said,

Beware:

The falling snowflakes,

So beautiful as to blind,

That seep into cracks

And lie in wait

Year after year

To break your countenance

And turn it to dust.

Leaving it to blow

Aimlessly in the wind.

 

For what is love but

Cement formed

From a single mold?

Strengthened by steel

Hardened in the rising sun

Smoothed by a ballet of trowels

It becomes a single path.

 

So tread lightly on this esplanade

Of love beneath your feet

Skip rope, draw chalk figures,

And dance upon it,

Let it lead you to

Wondrous playgrounds

And home again.

 

This he said.

Before he continued

On his journey.

 

This man without a home

 

Time

Time: a man-made concept of life broken into seconds, minutes, days… Something I never seem to have enough of.  I wear so many hats it is often challenging just to spend a few moments to dream of the new story or  poem.

I miss those days when I’d hike for miles and watch the clouds form into films. I’d look up as their wispy outlines drew stories of my making. Then, journal in hand,  I’d plop down against a boulder, sand dune, or tree and began to scratch furiously across the page. Letting the scenes unfold before me, faster my hand would go.

And time would drift away.

A Mother’s Day Poem to Grandma

 

As I look back

And view

The 1963-RCA-wide-screen-color-t.v.

It flickers on.

Before me lie

Cousins, brothers, sisters

Splayed on low ply carpet

Fidgety chins drilling holes into their fists,

Eyes wide

Elbow to elbow

 

“Hey! Scoot over! I can’t see!”

“Grandma!?”

 

Grandma’s voice:

A scratched phonograph record

I continue to dance to.

“Now, now you kids get along”

She soothed,

And we did.

 

I change the channel

 

Grandma’s toast

Waiting in the warming oven

Golden edged butter rays

Radiating like mini-suns.

I watched them melt and disappear.

“It’s ready!”

I heard my child-voice cheer.

 

 

 

Commercial time

 

Cousin Davey giving a testimonial

“Round steak and Grandma-Gravy on top of white bread taste better than Sizzler’s t-bone anyday.”

 

Back to our program

 

Bernice kneeling in a stunted strawberry patch

Sturdy hands grasping an unfortunate dandelion.

“This hard pan” she mutters

As her harrow-hand cuts rows

Into the brick

That was her stretch of land.

 

I wonder what’s on Channel Three?

 

Children lie on either sofa

A-bed for the night,

Watching her,

Watching

That RCA-wide-screen-color-t.v.

Johnny ‘Carson’s handsome face

Flirting through the glass,

Her head tossed back in laughter

Course-grey hair bouncing

And catching the dim light.

 

We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.

 

“Yahtzee!” thrice she shrieks.

Aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers chuckle

As  kids mumble “I wanted Yahtzee.”

And Bernice Stuart wins it again, folks.

 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

 

Grandma’s arms

Kneading pie dough or pulling fabric

As she bent over the antique Singer sewing machine

Making secret gifts we all knew about.

Were draped velvet

For small hands to brush.

Each one of us

(the grandchildren)

Would pet

The softness of she

As tender whispers called in our minds:

“Those arms are just for me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Binary Philosophers: A Poem

In the Desert of the Real

We are the creatures

Who lope, crawl, and slither

But here

On the circuit board

We are noesis.

Binary philosophers

Espousing 1 and 0.

 

We ask the screen:

When we are zero

In the hard drive of our souls

Do we lose mass

And become antimatter?

Or in the vacuity

Of nothingness

Do we escape the desert

And touch the infinite?