Boyhood Inventory

 

Photo of Old Cigar Boxes from Pinterest

 

cigar box secrets
possessions with
powers of privacy
curious objects of
preadolescence
talisman childhood
artifacts taken as
innocent prisoners
of quiet discovery
culled from adventures
and escapades
brimming with fantasy

compass and whistle
flint arrowheads
penknife and snake
rattle fossils and
seashells a dragon
tooth world war two
carbine shell feathers
and rocks with some
eye-catching features
a dinosaur knuckle
a rabbit’s foot coins
from a buccaneer’s lair

all tucked in their
art-paneled vaults
among sneakers
and baseball gear
guarded by underbed
mists of incipient
unformed tomorrows
every possible future
just waits to emerge
from shadow to shape
that will someday
put all of these prized
secret treasures aside

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

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

False Memory

“Remembering Friends” by Karen Knutson

 

we were innocents
traveling life
common pathways
paved worn with
shared values
inherent diversities
channeled to loyalty
born free in spirit
of commonwealth
not a melting pot
but a mixing bowl
blending proud
colors and creeds

annealed dreams
yield exceptional
tensile strength
making possible
unified purpose
achieving great
civilized things
pushing men to
and through their
potential toward
prominent privilege
obtained of an
empire of intellect

so it once was
so it seems to the
eyes of my memory
visions so real
I can reach back
and touch them
feel every last aspect
of greatness the
pulsing pure essence
amassed with nobility

standing as witness
oath-sworn unto truth
I concede that I very
well could be mistaken
that none of it
ever did happen
my habit of painting
the past is perhaps
foolish labor
of mind over matter
distorted romantic and
stubborn with sentiment

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Undertow

“Swimmer in Yellow” by Gareth Lloyd Ball

 

time was
I could swim like a fish
cut a slice in the sea
beyond the big breakers
cleave cleansing swells
duck into their overwash
finding sublime
exhilaration

my body a blade
honed by timeless tumbles
in granular surf
slashes man-eater schools
daring their frenzy
my brine-tempered eyes
scorn the unholy threat
in their Silurian gaze
black fins form in gauntlets
slide wickedly past
my undeterred strokes
skimming my sides
feeling my fearlessness

heady were those days
when Neptune’s own fluid
coursed in my veins
and mariner ancestors
gathered to watch me
racing the continents
chasing the sun
pride lifting their ghosts
to the billowing blest
Mediterranean
breeze

but there came a day
aquafortis reached up
enveloped my legs
overwhelming my will
undermining my courage
relentless
it pulled at me
carried me
farther and farther
from shores of my birth
into depths unfamiliar
depositing me
in strange waters that maps called
the ocean of
vulnerability

 

 

From my books Range of Motion, Music of Scars and Legacies (vol. 1)

 

Bandstands

“Belper River Gardens Bandstand” by Andy Mayers

 

round gazebos pavilions
and pergola octagons
stood village greens
crowded with summers
of swirled cotton candy
and lemonade mason jars
drawn into innocent
haphazard circles
of lawnchairs and wickered
fried chicken and pies

here fat politicians
in straw hats and vests
with a flask in each pocket
blew clouds of cigar smoke
and fogbanking speeches
across crinkled buntings
between martial music
played slightly off key
over lawns packed with bowties
and gingham checked modesty

children roamed happily
innocence safely
preserved among apricots
peaches and plums
wanting blue ribbon samples
while learning to sing
stirring patriot songs
alive with the civics
that promised fulfilling
tomorrows ahead

this once was America
land of my birth
where my parents came
seeking and finding
their most cherished dreams
this once was America
long before she and I
fell down disabled
from festering mordant
internal disease

 

 

From my books City of Pawns, Music of Scars and Legacies (vol. 1)

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

Stanchions

Photo From Pinterest

 

hewn granite splinters
cold cuboid shafts
plunged deep into
border soils down
below reach by the
fingers of freeze
a bucolic perimetry
surveyed in rods limns
the pale of grassed
livestock estates hems
the outskirts of visual
fields forlorn artifacts
wounded and bleeding
with rust of garroted
hard century cinches of
barbed iron wire when
taut in their turnings
were coaxing devices
that stretched rural air
post to post plumbed
and sturdy resisting
the impulse to wander
now lonely the era of
husbandry gone with
colonial ghosts these
stone purposeless pickets
lean bleak among weeds
left to wonder if life
will recall them to arms

 

 

From my book Small Noise

 

 

 

Quaint

Our Town Hall – Built 1767

 

sylvan country lanes

tuck tranquil vignettes into

yesteryear’s pockets

 

Our Town Hall – Built 1767

 

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Undertow

“Swimmer in Yellow” by Gareth Lloyd Ball

time was
I could swim like a fish
cut a slice in the sea
beyond the big breakers
cleave cleansing swells
duck into their overwash
finding sublime
exhilaration

 

my body a blade
honed by timeless tumbles
in granular surf
slashes man-eater schools
daring their frenzy
my brine-tempered eyes
scorn the unholy threat
in their Silurian gaze
black fins form in gauntlets
slide wickedly past
my undeterred strokes
skimming my sides
feeling my fearlessness

 

heady were those days
when Neptune’s own fluid
coursed in my veins
and mariner ancestors
gathered to watch me
racing the continents
chasing the sun
pride lifting their ghosts
to the billowing blest
Mediterranean
breeze

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Bandstands

“Ligonier PA” by Caitlin Solan

round gazebos, pavilions
and pergola octagons
stood village greens
crowded with summers
of swirled cotton candy
and lemonade mason jars
drawn into innocent
haphazard circles
of lawnchairs and wickered
fried chicken and pies

here fat politicians
in straw hats and vests
with a flask in each pocket
blew clouds of cigar smoke
and fogbanking speeches
across crinkled buntings
between martial music
played slightly off key
over lawns packed with bowties
and gingham checked modesty

children roamed happily
innocence safely
preserved among apricots
peaches and plums
wanting blue ribbon samples
while learning to sing
stirring patriot songs
alive with the civics
that promised fulfilling
tomorrows ahead

this once was America
land of my birth
where my parents came
seeking and finding
their most cherished dreams
this once was America
long before she and I
fell down disabled
from festering mordant
internal disease

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)