Misty Morning

A misty morning masks

a summer day, shrouded

in low clouds rolling away

to reveal a new dawn rising,

a new day resurrected.

Scrunch and Me

(To Kaycee Lynn, on her 19th birthday)

I call her Scrunch

     -- sometimes –-

when I think of her

     the way she was, 

          newly born,

a tiny thing,

like her mother,

in the crook of my arm,

     head folded, protected,

     arms and legs tucked,

     her tiny fingers curling mine;

and snugly wrapped, she’s

safely scrunched into my arms.

Just she and I together,

     she asleep,

     me, almost,

          - the TV unwatched –

     watching her,

Scrunch and me.

I call her Scrunch

     - sometimes, remembering

          the way she was.

The Band Concert

We see you there, seated

in your lawn chairs, web and canvas,

blankets spread on the ground,

the old folks clutching their canes’

curved handles and the young families

with their leashéd dogs

and unleashed children running about;

the drone of neighborly conversation

settles in the air, a soft hush sharing

this night, anticipating what

we bring this cool summer evening.

And unannounced, we begin those first

three notes, so recognizable,

and you rise, hands over hearts and hats

removed. The words are so familiar, and we

hear your voices singing along, imagine we do

anyway, - what so proudly we hailed,

at the twilight’s last gleaming.

Our hearts swell with yours in this song uplifted,

a fitting start to our music, a summer’s entertainment

in these small towns and villages we call home,

the community band playing at a band stand

or out on the lawn, a small park among the trees

or the library, playing the music we know best,

a march or two and show tunes to set our toes

to tapping, and yours, too, tapping along

to some old songs, and some new ones.

We are not symphony players, paid professionals,

just your friends and neighbors, young and old,

the grocery clerk and your bank teller, the hardware man

from down the road, a school teacher free

for the summer with time to play, a hidden

talent little known by his students, or perhaps,

a retired hero or two, kids up from the high school

band, all coming together on a summer’s night

to play for you in the early dusk, our friends

and neighbors whom we see sitting there, listening,

the young and the old, as we see you every day

on the streets of town, a community gathering

brought together by a tradition begun

with hands over hearts and hats removed,

small town Americana, life celebrated in music.

Archaeology

At the bottom of a shoebox

from some old pair of shoes

I’d long ago outgrown or worn out

with miles of walking through life,

I found a picture, stuck there

not by glue but by time

and moisture; the blue ink scrawled

across the back, the letters

and words now blurred together,

is barely readable by these old

bifocal-ed eyes, head tilted back

and peering down my nose,

drawing the photo closer and pushing

it away, trying to make sense

of those smears and loops and swirls.

My name, though, stood out clearly,

clear enough, and yours.

Over the years since, though, and the miles,

our love blurred, too, and our lives

went the way lives go, this way and that way,

forward, and on and on and on, and the picture

becomes an artifact of some ancient

time long forgotten, grown over

with the vines and tangles we left behind,

years of growth obscuring that age,

that time until my archeological dig

in the ruins of my own life, hacking through,

revealed a shoebox holding you and me

in a world so dissimilar. What I’d had

I’d forgotten, a simpler time of love

shared in the innocence of youth where

what mattered most was us and being

together, a couple, and the world was

conquerable outside the bubble we’d

wrapped ourselves in, but like

the Incas and the Mayas and the old

Phoenicians, that all disappeared, mysteriously,

only to be found, rediscovered, years later

at the bottom of a shoebox in blue ink

blurred on the back of a picture,

mysterious runes of what could have been

that never quite became,

ancient words of a time gone by.

To the Graduates

We were all 18, once,

and waiting to cross

that stage, the next stage,

seated there, gowned in blue

or white or black, red

or maroon, eager and anxious,

afraid, though too afraid

to admit it, unprepared as we

really felt, not ready, not really,

not yet, but rising at our name

called, we stepped forward, and a diploma

now in hand, officially graduated

with a tassel moved from right

to left, as you will,

your turn now, a torch passed,

this rite of passage moving

you onward, forward, that next

stage your own to walk.

But you are not alone;

we who walked before you and those

long before us, we are here,

wishing you well, god-speed,

much success, as we were wished,

all of us, once, at 18,

and so wished, succeeded.

Poetry Scares Me

Poetry scares me;

those short trips we take

into poetry, alone, us

so afraid of solitude,

push us to face ourselves

in the images created

by the poetic word.