My Mother’s Father

 

“Barber Shop” by Robert Cottingham

(Regarding Niccolò DeTore)

bay rum barber poet
stropped razors and verse
white handlebar mustache
handsomely lifted his smile
Neapolitan gold in his eyes
bootstrap pride in his step
classic rhetoric served at
each meal from his dapper
silk tie and trim waistcoat
surveying his long kitchen
table where thirteen young
minds learned their everlast
lessons of life in America
steeped in his practicum
lovingly eagerly wrapped
in his keen gentle wisdom

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Enclave

“Country Communication” by Penny Duncklee

 

retreat and return
to an insular precinct
experience shared
of a proximate cause
common ken
tribal instinct
conveyed blood to bone
old familiar moralities
imprinting underside
surface of skin

final chapters of fiction
come filled with tense drama
but real life wants peace
at day’s end easy sunsets
untroubled by conflict
the sameness a haven
against changing times
best to live with one’s own
and to die among friends
in the smile of their light

tell the world to fuck off
its false progress
a thing to be loathed
keep the faith with a
close-in geography
front porch exchanges
that ratify values
repeating what ancestors
said in their prayers
for an unfailing future

 

*****************************

 

“Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates serious as himself.”        – Samuel Johnson

Papá

Papa c. 1938

 

there once lived a man

a truly good man

the only man ever

in the history of popes

of prelates and pilgrims

to walk

with stout legs of a horseman

healthy and hale

fearless with faith

upon Bernadette’s path

and into the grotto

where he knelt in devotion

and prayed

then arose

with emergent affliction

a permanent

cripple

mocked by the castoff

crutches and braces

festooning that shrine

it happened

so sayeth the scriptures

by his bitterless hand

in the bible

bearing our names

it happened

in the year of our Lord

when I was conceived

his auxiliary legs

 

 

(originally posted April 2013 – one of many poems I wrote for my father)

Seasons

“Four Season Tree” by Bruce White

seasons of self

have the good sense

to fade when

seasons of love

come vivid in bloom

call us out

of ourselves

turn the inward

to outward

make tending to lovers

our driving desire

seasons of self

behave gallant

recede behind

seasons of family

keep calendars

open inviting

our loved ones

to mark up their

want of our time

and affection

that earn the true

value of happiness

giving ourselves

unreservedly

fortifies virtue

with certain nobility

lifting the status

of love in its forms

to prime catalyst

sparking the utmost

fulfillment of

human experience

even when love-borne pain

works its terrible hold

on the heart

 

 

 

(originally posted October 2013)

Per Sempre nel Mio Cuore

“Old Hands” by Nelede Saeger

(Forever in My Heart)

my mother’s two hands
their name was Aida
for ninety-three years
till they died within mine

Neapolitan amber
kissed by the warmth
of ancestral gold suns
took on in their time
a tawny translucence
too-prominent veined

their rosaried
pianist fingers
misshapen
arthritic
two nicotined pads
in one comfortable
cigarette cleft

their butcher-strong grip
ably tended her
bed-ridden
twice-her-size husband
for sixty-three years
not to mention
their nursing
of parents and siblings
while raising three
boisterous
urbanized children

they made magic
of wooden-spooned sauces
and rolling-pinned pasta
some seventy-thousand
made-from-scratch meals
her affectionate gifts
from the recipes
cherished as prayers
in her heart

they used hair-nested
ear-rested pencils
to cipher their sales
to grocery customers
drawn upon
brown paper bags
so much faster and neater
than any old new-fangled
black and bronze
adding machine

they were peasant hands
born to bear
uncomplained pain
so toughened by toil
roughened by rustic
impatience
to get the job
any job
every job
done

yet tender as tulips
when drawn across
trouble-knit brows
of illness or grief
when stroking teared cheeks
of sadness or woe
I loved those two hands
even more than I know
how with every touch
they so dearly loved me

(originally posted April 2013)

Memory Stones

“Box of Rocks” by John N. Agnew

From her earthen womb
Gaia gave graciously
Unto my poor mortal hands
Geological viable ova
Older than Hesiod
Unseen by his all-seeing eyes
Unknown by his all-knowing mind
Escaping the narrative voice
Of Theogony

They nest where I placed them
A reverent clutch safely laid
In a gently scooped warm oaken bowl
Organically sculpted
By modern artisan fingers
Each egg of its own
Unique color and shape
Each plucked from the uterine ground
Wherever my family has dwelled

These precious plain stones
Became birth
Became life
Absorbed nectars of joy
And purulent sorrows
Imbued with the intimate
Floods of experience
Cherished as memories
Ready to touch

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Rings

 

“Wedding Rings” from AliExpress

 

 

magic lies within
amoral impurities
of yellow gold
circlets inscribed
with runic symbols
turned inward
on sanctified skin

powers penetrate
fortified fingers
overwhelming
retrograde skeptics
with confident peace
in contented alliance
to carry the years

powers that deflect
life’s punishing blows
with a two-sided shield
emblazoned with
sketches well blended
in portraits
revealing one face

powers that bend to
enwind iron strands
forming singleton
entity wearing
linked curves of
the lemniscate
promise of always

powers that convert
selfish forces
of ego into
cardiac passions
of selflessness
born of organic
commitment

powers that anneal
through diamond hot
passion compressing
one whole weighing
more than its halves
fused with more than
half-volumes of bliss

powers to create
from unhesitant love
new beginnings
new life in the thriving
embrace of a family
eagerly poised
for the future

powers to heal wounds
inflicted by age
with a mutual touch
of fingertip teardrops
adoring the scars
while hand-in-hand
memories smile

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Sturm und Drang

Cemetery Angel by Giulio Monteverde

(Regarding the Boston Marathon bombing)

 

in one terrible tick of the doomsday clock
a manchild vanished
in mists of explosive detestable animus
sending forth agonies
rivers of tears rushing headlong and over
rock ledges of piety
drowning forgiveness
in pounding cascades of venom and vengeance

small pieces of him reappeared in the form
of two hundred bullets
ballistic projectiles delivered of punishment
raw retribution
riddled the vile craven carcass
we knew as assassin number one

more pieces of him found staunch form
in cold steel
links of reckoning chain to manacle
cowardly bomb-laying wrists
and urine stained ankles
of pissant assassin number two

the pieces of him then regathered themselves
into innocent essence
righteous, rejoined
to coddling undying soft memories
of a mother and sister so brutally maimed
and a father with holes in his heart
their little boy
ever and always
their stalwart avenger

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Papá

Papa
c. 1938

there once lived a man

a truly good man

the only man ever

in the history of popes

of prelates and pilgrims

to walk

with stout legs of a horseman

healthy and hale

fearless with faith

upon Bernadette’s path

and into the grotto

where he knelt in devotion

and prayed

then arose

with emergent affliction

a permanent

cripple

mocked by the castoff

crutches and braces

festooning that shrine

it happened

so sayeth the scriptures

by his bitterless hand

in the bible

bearing our names

it happened

in the year of our Lord

when I was conceived

his auxiliary legs

 

 

(originally posted April 2013 – one of many poems I wrote for my father)

Arno

 

“Florence, Italy – Arno River” by Hall Groat II

 

 

I was born of a river
stone arches first spanned
by legions of Cassius
here where the dear
Ponte Vecchio
gives me my shade

Tuscan watershed drain
fills my veins with the
coursing of Renaissance
runoff infusing my
essence with arts
of the hand and the mind

I carry a legacy
heir to the Medici patronage
deep in the rush of my
currents that charge
new young streams
in pursuit of their paths

there is love in my waters
enough to bathe history
think of me, drink of me
sail on my shoulders
until you decide
where tomorrow will run

 

 

(originally posted November 2013)