"Take a picture"

“Take a picture,” he insists
of this simple magnificence
—and I do, because he asked
but the glory I’ll recall
was stored in his shining eyes
in ways a picture fails to realize.

November 2019

Do not destroy

In your anger do not destroy
The miscreant, the charlatan
The enemy who slaps your face:
For behind his confident visage
Is a child you do not know
Who may weep on bathroom floors
Or curse his life in the bitter cold;
A tender thing, whose strength
Has overcome thus far—but only just.
Do not supply the demons
Who stand over that fragile frame
You’ll never see, nor know.
Accept no abuse; and yet
In strength, bear his pride,
His bitter self-assurance—
And refuse to scar
another human heart.

November 2019

Knowing myself

I know myself
so much terribly better
than I ever wanted to.
I don’t hate myself, nor
resent what taught me—
but neither did I desire
this cold new horizon, this
dark discovery of self.
We deceive ourselves,
then learn through pain
to see the truth. But
it doesn’t make it easy
or even wanted; not
yet, anyway, not now.
It is what it is. Wisdom
grows upon us like moss
and the world takes on
a new flavor, a new color
and life goes on.

November 2019

The sky in Autumn

The deep blue of Autumn
sky calls to me, persistently
whether bright and crisp
or clothed in gray sweater-cloud,
anointed by the rain or
hidden by the moonlight;
her admirers wave gold tips
and slashing reds, remind me
that her royalty alone allows
their vibrant colors, otherwise
garish, irreverent, unmatched.
November skies speak open things
to me: promise eager possibility;
I fall in love under these skies
with Life itself and its paths,
fresh in every afternoon
unexplored and impatient
for me to summit, there to find
her deep blue sky awaits
and beckons me on for more





November 2019: I wrote a lot of poems about Fall. Hope the other seasons aren’t jealous, but I have a good explanation: Fall is just so much better than the other seasons.

Freedom, Empirical

You shall build empires: testaments
to human will and spirit, flung up
from the surface of a tired Earth,
whose gravity cannot contain you.
You shall paint upon the canvas of time
bright visions and marvels, difficult
even to imagine—only you shall:
will overcome, triumph, create. But then
in victory, surrounded by vast success,
how shall you compare to the bird
who is free, sitting on an electric wire
whose purpose she cannot divine;
perching on the distant pinnacle
of a towering mansion she did not build;
mounting on a wind she did not blow,
to drift in places humans only dimly know.
She does these things on her own behalf,
drifting to drift, eating to eat, laying eggs
because she must. Will you, then, envy
this mindless freedom, someday—
accomplished, victorious, and yet entombed
by the soaring walls of your own triumph?
Or can you balance, with a feather’s delight
these opposite things: the weight of triumph
and the ease of thin-boned flight?

November 2019