Reflection

My children think the mirror is glass
but you know it’s metal, right?
—The reflecting bit that makes it what it is.
Thin, thinner than anything, a foil, only; a coating;
else the object is a window, a plane of glass.
We all have a bit like that, too: thin, thinner than anything
and its reflection makes us what they think we are.
It’s not the heaviest part; it’s hard to notice;
but sometimes, as with mirrors
I wonder what we really look like.



Feb 2023

Existence

The exploring pawn arrives at a diagonal

but isn't taken; what remains is potential

while other pieces develop, staring down

the threat of a conflict not their own.  They

"leave the tension," a commentator says

of the masters behind this savage dance

as the frozen pawns lock eyes, waiting

to discover who will be the first to break.

feb 2023

In Absentia

The pen runs dry
from time to time
like faith, like ambition
and I try not to let it
weigh too much for me;
sometimes I even succeed.






january 2023

hallway thunder

the rumble of threatened lightning

over the hill, there; probably miles away

even further than Monroeville, maybe

--suggested adventure to my childish ears.

as if the storm would send us all back

to a time of sticks and sneaking in the woods,

even the adults, freed of their watches.

but now some nights i am the rumble itself

demanding obedience, performance,

why did you think eight times four was forty-two?

a slave to time, to my phone, to it's-past-bedtime

--how could i betray myself thus

when part of me is still in the Shelton's driveway

eight years old, hearing thunder, thinking

maybe we'll get to live in the woods now.

january 2023

view from the parking structure at midnight

nothing will happen, i tell myself

in a soothing self voice: accepting

nothing as reality, not disappointment

nor failure, but Just-What-Is. well,

i try. and underneath it all,

maybe it doesn't matter anyway:

disappointment is reality too, i say,

losing something inside myself

calming something inside myself

sad about nothing, inside myself.







dec 2022