February Day, Boston (II)
— for Ralph Half past seven. I wake from a dream that brought back everything, get up in silence to sun on the calla lily in the vase, a single beam assaulting the swirled cup. All last night I slept in fits and starts, curled up like a leaf into myself after learning that you were gone, how the shared fact of us in childhood was now buried. Yesterday pent up in this apartment, snow skimmed past the windows on horizontal waves veiling the loss that lingered, drifts piled up on the front steps under the high wind. Even the February air scraped under the peeling windowsill. How did our...
Read MoreFebruary Day, Boston
Half past eight. I wake in silence to sun on the calla lily, a single beam assaulting he white swirled cup. Yesterday snow skimmed past the windows on horizontal waves, drifts piling up on the front steps under the high wind. I shoveled snow that fell for three days. February air scrapes under the peeling windowsill. Bleached light skids across the length of the room into each corner on this timid morning before the sun rushes away. This afternoon the narcissus bulbs I planted earlier in clay pots are splitting open, forced out into...
Read MoreDecember Night
The trees know first. An ice storm is moving in. I’m still holding back trouble I’ve carried around in my mind for two days. Yet some worries are always there. Must admit it has felt like an empty year. At midnight I come to bed in pitch black, but nothing brings relief in the clinging cold. All night I live with cracking branches, the wind refusing to die down, and still awake at four a.m. with my brain beating under this blurred sky. The slim birches, stripped of color, flex down and over in the freezing darkness. Then the sky clears, the white trunks straighten by dawn, as in...
Read MoreLot’s Confession
Genesis 19:1-29 In the night air the city square was falling fire, our eyes stitched in burning, the last chance to break out. I had to put an end to it, my daughters offered to strangers at the gate yesterday, the girls just squinted at me twisting their braided hair. Up the mountain, my wife crossed her hands, tight fisted against her stomach, wrapping her sadness in the folds of her blue dress when she turned back to head down to the bones of our baby boy in the backyard. Longing for the life she left behind came clawing back to her, stronger than any punishing commandment. She stored...
Read MoreThe Blue Hour
arrives. The late light turning on me draws the day closer, the east meadow beyond a grove of birches, some animal stirring at the edge of sight. Peering out, my mind grows sharper. Let it happen — release, release like the wind riffling through the trembling ferns after two days of rain. In places only whispering birds fly to, everything collapses into green shadows, my eyes adjusting to the faceless dark. I remember a time being afraid of it, even when I was most hidden. Now it feels safe, the way the perfected dark lets it all pass without comment, marking each thing. What I wanted...
Read More