Scene From A Mall

Tonight I’m looking at a photograph
taken in a shopping mall years ago;
my father, my stepmother,
and my two children
lined up before the camera
like captive soldiers.
It occurs to me that this is the only picture
I have of them all together.

They are bundled up
in coats and hats, almost smiling.
Lit wreaths gleam in the background.
The irony.
My father did not celebrate holidays,
would likely not approve.
Yet here I am, so many years later,
in my lap, the Christmas card never sent.

Home Baked

I remember how early the darkness came.
Long noisy bus rides home from school in winter,
walking in the front door at four o’clock, sometimes later –
the light outside nearly gone.
Inside, the house was warm
and smelled of the wood stove, occasionally molasses
if grandma had just baked a fresh batch.
Sometimes she’d let me sample one before dinner,
while the cookies were still warm and soft,
the sweet molasses and gooey raisins melting
against the roof of my mouth.
Sometimes I still smell them, taste them,
though it’s been over thirty-five years
since my tongue and those last crumbs parted ways.

I left on an early summer day in 1989,
knowing I wouldn’t be back,
at least not to stay.
Maybe Grandma knew it too. Maybe not.
Either way, she would have given no hint,
made no mention. It wasn’t her way.
She was a creature of the moment,
filling every hour with her palpable presence –
the house, the kitchen, especially that little kitchen,
glowed with a warmth that burns my memory.

An earlier version of this poem first appeared on spillwords.com. in September of 2023.

Skylon

That day, in a glass-enclosed elevator,
squeezed in like a school of fish
rising 775 feet to the top of the swaying tower,
a slyly grinning man explained to us
how it had to do that so as not to snap apart.
Everyone laughed nervously.
I shuttered and covered my eyes with my hands.
My mother clutched my shoulder, calmly remarking on the view –
Niagara Falls veiled in mist, I suppose,
though I wouldn’t know because I refused to look.
Minutes later, the elevator came to a stop.
The doors slid open.
We stepped out onto a cold windy deck
and touched the sky.

Three Words

Three little words
spray painted on a fence.
Far from the only words there,
but the only one’s to catch my eye.
So whoever you are, why did you do it?
I just wanted to walk today
without overthinking.
Now I’m tangled up
in that question and others.
Beyond basic survival instincts,
why do we get out of bed at all?
Do what we do?
Any of us?
For Profit?
Love?
Recognition?
What if it all boils down
to three jagged little words in the end,
whether uttered, scrawled, or screamed?

I was here!

Allure

I’ve always wanted to live by the ocean.
I can’t quite explain it –
I’m terrified of deep water.

Still, I promised myself once
that someday I would,
even if only half believing.

Midlife and landlocked, I’m no closer,
though I’m certainly closer to death,
whatever that is.

Day after day I want to wake up,
gaze down at a sleepy harbor,
and step out into coastal winds.

I want to make tracks in cool wet sands.
and slip into sleep with the breakers.
I want to live and die by the ocean.

God knows why.

Mathematics

The word alone
makes me squirm.
My eyes begin to cross.
My skull throbs
in time with my heart –
two heavy bass drums.
Flashcard memories
torture my brain –
precarious classroom moments frozen
in front of a blackboard,
sweaty fingers fisting the chalk, scratching, erasing, scratching, erasing.
Equations I cannot solve.
Numbers. Graphs.
Symbols. Decimal points…
Mathematics.
My kryptonite. My nemesis.
Cold. Glaring. Calculating,
so very, very calculating,
yet never adding up
to anything.

Bright Shiny Things

The apples, the berries, the pears,
the glossy foldout ad.
Later, the dubious walk
through the grocery store aisle
with your crumpled little list
and your wobbly wheeled cart.

It’s odd when you think about it,
what’s actually being sold –
enhanced product photography,
rich studio lighting,
all those screaming sirens of color –
how the finest images
are almost always wrong.

One Summer

As far as we could see,
endless horizon,
roaring ocean surf
beating back the shore.
You sat on a bench
in a pretty summer dress
smiling up at me
while I positioned the camera –

dream house high in the background,
jagged coastline outstretched
in the fore,
bleach denim sky
draped over it all.

Cool salty air filled our lungs,
our pockets hung heavy
with those smooth damp stones
we’d plucked earlier from the beach.
Then, the moment the sun bowed
behind a cloud,
I clicked the shutter release,
and held it all in my hands.

Storm Break

The sun splits through the black
of a passing storm.
The trees pour down on us
while we walk,
even though the rain
has all but stopped.
The river runs high.
We stroll along beside its hyper current, her and I.
She buries her nose in the wet grass
while I study an uncertain sky,
still ominous to the west,
grumbling thunderous threats,
yet all is calm here on the ground,
washed clean of everything
but dog and man.

Don’t Look Down

Sometimes I still see her out there,
waist-deep in water, alone and waiting –
one bright afternoon long ago.
She is looking up at me
on the old tire swing
as I soar out high overhead,
hands cupped around her eyes,
wet hair glistening in the summer sun.

“Don’t look down.
Just close your eyes and let go!”

I do as she says and seconds later
I’m tumbling out of the sky
like a man without a parachute,
all arms and legs, kicking and flailing,
before an ugly splash landing
into dark cold water.

She meets me at the surface
with laughter, high fives.
I sprint back up the muddy bank
for another go, only this time my hands slip
off the rope too soon.
Falling backward, I plunge in headfirst
and sink. My mouth full of water,
my breath dead in my throat,
I grope for a surface I cannot find
before feeling a firm tug on my arm.
And when I open my eyes
to a flood of dazzling light,
I’m staring into the grinning face
of an angel and a friend.

Where It Happened

I pass that place nearly every day
on my way to someplace else –
once the home of a woman and her young child
until they were senselessly murdered one night
by someone they may have trusted.

A plaque and banner face the street
displaying the names of the two victims,
“gone but not forgotten.”
The balloons and stuffed toys, however, have long disappeared,
and the house is a darker shade of gray these days, or, is it the same?

People are living there again, new tenants
whose floral curtains billow in the upstairs windows.
Yes, of course, they know what took place there,
but a roof is a roof and walls are walls,
however sturdy, indifferent, and unmoved by their history.

Ask of them what you must. Expect no answers.