The Trains
We felt them first. Fingers pressed to the rails,
a dull rumble filled our hands and hummed into
our arms before the cone of light, the great clatter
of metal against metal. Trestled high, above the
bridge on Grand Avenue, we knew those tracks
went on forever, between trees that lined the ties
like stations of the cross. The hill was forbidden but
holy, thick with clover, ripe with berries in spring.
The year I was nine, an April blizzard swept the
sky and we went to the trains in the dark. The wires
strummed into sparks, the rails were a dazzle of
shadows. Our faces — ghosts of our selves — reflected
in every train car window, lines of breath etched in
passing glass. Above us, chimney smoke hung like
smears of candle grease among the clouds.
We were grubby and poor, but we believed. We said
our prayers, ate fish on Fridays, and never rode
those trains. We could only kneel in something like
wonder, something like praise, and wait for the
tracks’ reverent shudder. The memory is a gauze
engine that time blows through and keeps me small.
From What Matters (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2011)
First Published in an Earlier Version in Paterson Literary Review
________________________________________
Twilight and What There Is
The gauze eyelid is gone and your spun glass hand. The past that always knew where to find you has lost its place. The ghosts have forgotten your name. There’s nothing left for the dead to remember—nothing catches up (there’s no meter running).
New grass lifts the field—bloodroot, bluebells, a thousand things so small and flawless they almost go unnoticed. Translation doesn’t escape you: you’re grateful for sunset’s watery rust and this, something instinctive called into being, more than perceived. More than memory, more than moment—nothing provisional. Anything you might say, might think, would be too much. You open your palms in a dusky Rorschach and let the dark fall through.
From A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015)
First Published in Ragazine, Volume 10, Number 2
________________________________________
What You Know
A stray dog laps the moon from a broken flowerpot. Silk hydrangeas bloom against the fence. A heron stands on the clothesline—bluer than blue—perched where (sky, earth) edges converge.
On the wall, the painting of a clock ticks, hands painted in at three forty-seven. She takes a wax apple from the bowl and peels it with a silver fruit knife. Sugared bread dries on the table. Across the room, a dimensional window masquerades as persuasion. If you believe it, it is.
From A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015)
First Published in Ragazine, Volume 10, Number 2
________________________________________
This Light, October 2nd
“No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life
can say anything that has not already been said better
by the wind in the pine trees.” —Thomas Merton
I haven’t been here in such a long time,
I forgot how still the water is, how
soft the air’s silence, the quality of light
as it starts to fade. At dusk, the sky’s cast
blue darkens and eddies gently toward
night. Close in the order of their being,
a deer and her fawn move away from
the forest to graze in a sheltered space
where field and woodland join.
Deep in the forest, tall pines fill with
wind that towers upward. It reminds
me that despite whatever falls, life
is still a skyward thing. It’s good to
be alone with only these trees and the
wind’s spirit—this moment a dimension
beyond all distance and time.
Today is the Feast of Guardian Angels (the
ones with kind wings) who watch over us
and protect us—whether you believe in them
or not, such things seem possible here
as one bird scatters into dozens of smaller
birds that tip the sky forward before
they disappear as we all must disappear,
taking with us what little we know of
infinite wisdom, infinite love.
(First Published: Exit 13 for #27, Spring 2022)
________________________________________
One of Us
His name was Richard, and he was one of us, a
neighborhood kid who lived in one of the tired
houses on the other side of Route 1, a place
where trucks rumbled through our dreams and
small planes from Linden Airport flew overhead.
Separated from the rest of Rahway by the highway’s
paved line, safe inside our thin streets and broken
sidewalks, we played together at Flanagan’s Field.
All equally poor—equally the same—we had no
idea that people lived differently in other parts of town.
In the early 50s, “gym” wasn’t a regular subject,
but once a week we first graders put on our sneakers
and went to that huge room overhung with basketball
nets and lined with bleachers. There, our teacher
marched us in tight formation, in staggered ranks,
in moving circles. One week, she told the girls
to choose partners for folk dancing. Of course, I
chose Richard—he was my friend—and what fun
it was to spin around the gym in our own versions
of the tarantella, the polka, the Irish jig.
That afternoon, on the playground, I found Richard
hunched by a row of hedges. He was crying, but
when I went to him, he shrugged me away and
covered his face with his hands. It was then that
a group of kids, made a circle around me and
chanted, n----r lover, n----r lover. Strangely afraid,
I ran from the schoolyard and crossed Route 1 by
myself (something I was forbidden to do). My
parents must have contacted the school because
the taunting stopped, but something innocent
changed that day. Richard and I stayed friends until
high school when his family moved away. I didn’t
see him again until years later in a local ShopRite.
I heard a voice say my name, I turned, and there
was Richard. We spoke for a while about who we
had become and, then, he bowed from the waist and
smiled. I curtseyed, and there we were doing a crazy
waltz down the produce aisle, past canned goods
and candies, past a dozen shoppers who stepped back
and, watching us, slowly began to applaud.
(First Place Winner, Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, 2021, Published Paterson Literary Review, 2022)
A stray dog laps the moon from a broken flowerpot. Silk hydrangeas bloom against the fence. A heron stands on the clothesline—bluer than blue—perched where (sky, earth) edges converge.
On the wall, the painting of a clock ticks, hands painted in at three forty-seven. She takes a wax apple from the bowl and peels it with a silver fruit knife. Sugared bread dries on the table. Across the room, a dimensional window masquerades as persuasion. If you believe it, it is.
From A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015)
First Published in Ragazine, Volume 10, Number 2
________________________________________
This Light, October 2nd
“No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life
can say anything that has not already been said better
by the wind in the pine trees.” —Thomas Merton
I haven’t been here in such a long time,
I forgot how still the water is, how
soft the air’s silence, the quality of light
as it starts to fade. At dusk, the sky’s cast
blue darkens and eddies gently toward
night. Close in the order of their being,
a deer and her fawn move away from
the forest to graze in a sheltered space
where field and woodland join.
Deep in the forest, tall pines fill with
wind that towers upward. It reminds
me that despite whatever falls, life
is still a skyward thing. It’s good to
be alone with only these trees and the
wind’s spirit—this moment a dimension
beyond all distance and time.
Today is the Feast of Guardian Angels (the
ones with kind wings) who watch over us
and protect us—whether you believe in them
or not, such things seem possible here
as one bird scatters into dozens of smaller
birds that tip the sky forward before
they disappear as we all must disappear,
taking with us what little we know of
infinite wisdom, infinite love.
(First Published: Exit 13 for #27, Spring 2022)
________________________________________
One of Us
His name was Richard, and he was one of us, a
neighborhood kid who lived in one of the tired
houses on the other side of Route 1, a place
where trucks rumbled through our dreams and
small planes from Linden Airport flew overhead.
Separated from the rest of Rahway by the highway’s
paved line, safe inside our thin streets and broken
sidewalks, we played together at Flanagan’s Field.
All equally poor—equally the same—we had no
idea that people lived differently in other parts of town.
In the early 50s, “gym” wasn’t a regular subject,
but once a week we first graders put on our sneakers
and went to that huge room overhung with basketball
nets and lined with bleachers. There, our teacher
marched us in tight formation, in staggered ranks,
in moving circles. One week, she told the girls
to choose partners for folk dancing. Of course, I
chose Richard—he was my friend—and what fun
it was to spin around the gym in our own versions
of the tarantella, the polka, the Irish jig.
That afternoon, on the playground, I found Richard
hunched by a row of hedges. He was crying, but
when I went to him, he shrugged me away and
covered his face with his hands. It was then that
a group of kids, made a circle around me and
chanted, n----r lover, n----r lover. Strangely afraid,
I ran from the schoolyard and crossed Route 1 by
myself (something I was forbidden to do). My
parents must have contacted the school because
the taunting stopped, but something innocent
changed that day. Richard and I stayed friends until
high school when his family moved away. I didn’t
see him again until years later in a local ShopRite.
I heard a voice say my name, I turned, and there
was Richard. We spoke for a while about who we
had become and, then, he bowed from the waist and
smiled. I curtseyed, and there we were doing a crazy
waltz down the produce aisle, past canned goods
and candies, past a dozen shoppers who stepped back
and, watching us, slowly began to applaud.
(First Place Winner, Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, 2021, Published Paterson Literary Review, 2022)
