Travel

March 28, 2023

MOON WATCH

I’m guessing it was
about 2 AM, I can’t be sure
since the only clock
in the bedroom was analog
and unlighted, visible only by day.

I don’t know what woke me,
it just seems to happen, but the moon
was peering in between the slats
of closed window blinds.

I don’t like being watched
in my sleep, certainly not
by some voyeuristic interloper
but there she was and it was clear
there wasn’t a damned thing
I could do about it,
and we both knew it.

On the mesa she might be accompanied
by a coyote, but here she traveled solo
always seeming to want to watch
as my dreams unfurled
across the screen, and Luna simply
didn’t want to miss this night’s show.

March 16, 2023

ONE WAY TICKET

He steps off the train. He looks around expecting her to be there. She said she would meet him. It is why he came. She does not answer her phone. As the night approaches, he gets a text message, waits patiently for the next train back to where he started.

Appeared in 50 Word Stories, February 2023
http://fiftywordstories.com/2023/02/08/lou-faber-one-way-ticket/

March 7, 2023

PHONE HOME?

Perhaps we spend too much
time wondering if there are
aliens of the ET sort among us.

Let’a face it, if they are
advanced enough to get here,
they ought to be able to fit in
without standing out, so
sorry Hollywood, it may make
for an exciting movie but
it just isn’t all that likely.

And before you remind me
of UFO sightings, just because
you see a bus stop in the dark
of night, you can’t be certain
anyone got off or on, can you?

February 18, 2023

GOING

You know where you want to go,
which is the first step in getting there,
but there are countless routes
you can take with a variety
of obstacles which you cannot see
until you have committed
to that route, and there is to be
no turning back once you choose
the route you intend to take.

Think about your selection,
do you want the route which seems
to be the shortest, or the longer one
which might have fewer obstacles
to overcome, or so it is said.

Or do you want to reconsider
going there, for the effort may
be great and the reward nominal,
so perhaps it is best if you simply
remain here in a place you well know.

January 26, 2023

MID MORNING SONG

He leans against the wall
outside the Prêt à Manger
witting with his dog
on the old Mexican blankets
that look uniquely out of place
on a cool London morning.
He sips the now fetid coffee
in its Styrofoam cup,
its Burger King logo
and temperature warning.
His hair is long, mostly
gray with streaks of white,
his beard white
with swaths of blond, he
looks as though he
just stepped down the plank
of the great sailing ship,
returned from a voyage
save for his tattered, stained
Manchester United sweatpants.
I put 50p in his metal box
against my better judgment
and stroke behind the ears
of the placid dog.
“May you be many times praised”
he sputters, through teeth
stained tobacco brown,
“for with more like you,
Rufus here, and I shall later
enjoy a fine repast.
May Saint Dymphna be praised.”
In the taxi to Paddington Station
I wonder who my patron
might be, if Jews
only had Saints.

First published in Sideways Poetry Magazine, Issue Two
https://sidewayspoetry.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/london-issue-2-1.pdf

January 25, 2023

HARLECH CASTLE

I stood on the ramparts
that cold, wet morning
looking out over the waiting
Irish Sea, this day offering
only rain and a November chill.

Write haiku, she said to us
and I thought of Basho
and Issu who never stood
on a 13th Century Welsh
fortress and never imagined
writing about Llywelyn
great or not nearly so.

In the rain and chill
I scribbled furiously,
retreated to the outer ward
where I was joined
by a fellow poet who
suggested that a tea
in the village would
please even old Basho.

January 15, 2023

ARRHYTHMIA

Life ought be little more than
arrhythmic motion, a path
we only want to straighten,
to smooth, its natural, necessary
twists and bumps somehow,
for we always see them as
impediments not moments
of joyous indecision where
there are no wrong choices
for each choice unfolds
a new path never trodden,
never imagined or foreseen.

A bird flies to where it needs
to be, but for most that are
not migrating, that place
isn’t known until arrival and
even then, save for nesting,
it is the right place only for
a day, a week, a month
or perhaps only a moment,
for a bird knows only this
moment and this until
there are no more moments.

January 14, 2023

EN ROUTE

We spend so much of our lives
imagining we are en route,
always on the way to somewhere
if often not certain where that
somewhere might be.

It seems we intensely dislike
not being in motion, not focused
on the future, the destination,
never wanting to be, seeming
to dread being static.

Yet the irony is that we,
at any given moment, are
never en route anywhere
for we are, in each moment
if we are in that moment,
exactly where we are,
en route to nowhere.

January 7, 2023

EIRE

They say you must cherish
your memories lest they slip
away in the night, trying for
a freedom you deny them.

I remember Ireland, knowing
it was home although at the time
I thought I was Ashkenazi
and Portuguese, but my genes
were trying to tell me something.

I remember driving a stick
shift down narrow roads,
always keeping in mind
the advice, “if you hear
the branches of the yellow
gorse against the side
of the car you’re fine, if
you hear the stone of the fences
you’ll have a large bill
when you return the car.

And Guinness on tap, always
Guinness on tap.