Hug the U.S. (November 7, 2020)
Today is a big day. I propose a toast: Here’s to the land of the brave and not so brave, Home of the free and not so free, A potpourri of accents, skin hues, Religious views or none, Ancestors from…
The Hug Knows No Bounds
Sunshine angles filtered by a leafy crown And hoofprints on the ground a dotted chart That graphs a friendship’s progress on its path, The rhythm of two bodies, yet one heart. Two on the shadowed trail or meadow bright Or…
Teeshirt Teacher
Hair ends fall like fronds Around her face. To a child She’s as tall as a queen palm. Warm breeze strokes her arm As she turns the page And ivory smiles light java faces. They love her, these kids, And…
On a Long and Cherished Friendship
Stack the still photos of creation: The infant cooling earth, receding seas, Tectonic inches, eruptions, upward plateaus Pushing and sculpting canyons deep Then reduced to feldspar, shards and sand. Stack the still shots of evolution: The yearning mindless cell, The…
Feel the Hug
Dragonfly dips, swallow soars, Centipede skims the Asian earth. Curiosity and smiles surprise us Like welcome mats. Between us, music is a wide jade river, A wide strong river. Our separate words, Swept on ancient currents, Drift like fallen leaves.…
Laughter From Your Truest Self
(To Gail, whose laughter sets mine loose, with love) Look at you, Who entwines today’s happy vision With a myrrhic history of the wounded child. O seamless life! O clever evolution! This is no small migration That dwarfs the geese,…
Uphill
A flight of prisms Tears unstuck Where youth is going Ends in gold Childhood was a landscape These are our best years Let us be mountains of rainbows and bliss Let our embraces be immortal From this day on
Everyone Needs a Friend Like This
She has a shoreline smile Below wheatfield hair, A crescent of white land For shipwrecked hearts. Like a bow, she’ll draw you Over the strings–no matter If you’re in good tune– Until you can hear what she hears That’s sweet…
Lookin’ For Hope In All The Right Places
A visionary in vintage clothing, A hymn’s longing in faded jeans, Rummaging through objets d’art Or searching for stars in empathic eyes Twinkling over facemasks. The tea leaves in my old hiking boots Laugh like Gibraltar itself At such good…
Invitation from the Queen of Hearts
Meringue images, A la mode memories Of safer days Fluff my pillow at moonrise. I made contact with our future Four years ago. Will the knave of hearts Be up to thievery? We are suspended in pandemic, No bowl-of-cherries trance…
