This night
in cold moonlight
earth rises up
clouds float down
ghosts walk the margin.
Old ones sing
now shall be then
older ones still sing
then shall be once
to wolf and coyote.
In this season of north winds
sun’s heat barren
spirits rise up
dreams descend
man lies interspersed.
Women sing
we are bearers
men sing
we are sowers.
First appeared in Dipity, Vol. 3, April 2023
I still marvel at the way
the mind can rewrite
the narrative arc of memories,
taking away sharp edges,
eroding or erasing some
too painful to relive, and
bringing others out
from deep storage, some
largely forgotten, to be
battled with in dreams,
demons wrestled to submission.
In my dreams I have had
a final conversation with
my step-sibling, who
told me of my father’s
death in a text message,
who never delivered my
nominal share of either
parents estate, who made
it clear I did not matter,
and in the dream I
pronounced him
dead to me and buried him
in a place my memory
can and will not visit.
I wanted to write like Heaney
but of course he got there first
and could do it in two languages,
so that was out of the question.
I tried to write like other
of the greats only to find that
what set them apart from so many
set them rather far apart from me.
So I an left to write as myself,
which I find a bit boring for I
know myself all too well, and anything
I say or write I’ve heard before.
But I suppose you have not
heard it before so unless you are
the one who sneaks into my dreams
before I can capture them,
in which case would you return
the best of them, for in them
I know lies whatever better poems
I have yet to cast to paper.
I have concluded that God created the cat
in a moment of exhaustion or of extreme pique.
How else to explain such a soft fur covered creature
capable at once of a gentle caress and a claw
lunging out at a hand or face deemed too close.
Why else this projectile constantly launched
only at those places it was not to be,
fine wood tables etched with reminders
of its sudden presence and rapid departure.
What else to explain this shedding ball
of multihued fur that always curls in sleep
in the one place you wish to sit
and even when it cedes a seat to you, smirks
in the realization you will soon
an unexpectedly be half covered in fur.
Why this package of fluff and terror crawls
beneath your blanket as you verge on sleep
curls tightly against you and begins its gentle
rhythmic purring that draws you deeply
into a world of fur filled dreams.
First Published in ZOOANTHOLOGY, Sweetycat Press, August 2022
You are still there. You have a patience that I will not know in this lifetime. I know I can always find you, even though you never reach out to me except in my dreams. There I tell you my life story and you listen intently. You have no need to ask questions, knowing I will tell the whole story in due time, And time is one thing you have that I, increasingly, lack. So I’ll be back for another visit soon and you will be waiting for me, mother.
The mind can be
a brutal editor, revising
history, rejecting memories
without a substantial rewrite.
My step sister, many years
dead remains five, that
young face engrafted
on the woman ravaged
by unrelenting cancers.
My first wife of 30 years
is mostly faceless, the
mental pictures and dreams
edited until only she
is unrecognizable.
And in moments of reflection
I am no longer adopted,
the step-siblings were,
but they are now
just like family, almost.
I spent too much time looking
backward, looking into the past,
looking into the mirror
to frame a dream history
of my desires and fears.
He called one morning, left
a message, “Mother died,
more details will follow.”
A mother his by birth,
mine by legal act.
I should have felt stunned
anger, I said quietly to myself
he’s cocky, has issues, and went
about momentary mourning.
That is the psyche of the adoptee who
was never family, always an adjunct.
Later my antediluvian dreams
gave way under a torrent
of deoxyribonucleic acid rain.
She who I imagined in the mirror
took name, took shape from
and old yearbook, offered
a history, a family, a heritage.
When I knelt at her grave
she told me her story
in hushed tones, or was it
the breeze in the pines on the hill
overlooking the Kanawha?
I bid her farewell that day,
placed a pebble on her headstone,
stroked the cold marble
and mourned an untouched mother.
My history is like an ill-
sewn quilt, odd pieces
of parents stitched loosely
together, always ready to come
apart, fade or be thrown away.
Perhaps my history is
more like a beloved
old pair of jeans, holes
appear and are patched,
patches wear out and are
replaced, or the hole is
just left, as if it were
somehow a fashion statement.
There is little normal
when you are adopted, loved
perhaps, but always
on the edge of being
an outsider, and when that
is repeated, the distance
grows exponentially,
until you find a birth parent
or two and the holes
are patched with dreams
of what might have been.
Of course there is something I ought
to say, moments like this require it,
it goes without saying, painfully.
I practiced lines for hours, rehearsed
in my dreams for weeks, knew
for years I’d be rendered mute.
My tongue swells, threatening
to escape my mouth or take refuge
deep within my esophagus.
Your silence is only compounding
my anxiety, how can I, a man
of words, be rendered silent
by the thought of speaking to you,
of telling you that I finally now
joyously have what I feared I wouldn’t ever.
A wife and lover deserves
better than this.
I have never been
to Liszkowo but I have been
to Charleston, West Virginia
and visited the B’nai Jacob Cemetery
and for me, that is as close
as I need to come to Liszkowo
for I don’t speak Lithuanian
though it runs through my veins.
I have visited the Highlands
and the Isle of Islay
but I never saw my
father’s kin reach out to me,
although they speak to me
in my dreams.
an old writer and his words 