Alphabet City

The crisp letters of your name,
the energy behind your eyes.

You’re all
you’re meant to be,

chrism on the brow,
a reminder of the holiest,
new day: awakening.

After the floods,
before the angels fell,
when we were barefoot and young.

Before the crest of the water rose
above our foreheads,
leaving us sublime.

Forgotten amid detritus,
afloat among flotsam.

Ferrying back home.
Downriver.
On a toy boat,
a makeshift raft
adrift on warm sands,
the smell of the coral
saline, sweet herbal
sprayed rush of the surf on our tongues, the foam about our ankles.

Our footsteps along the edge
never fade.

And you twirl and you dance in the foam,

slowly with grace in the white caps,

your face basks in sky,

a salutation
to the brilliance that you are,

to the day
that you chose to be.

Uniquely you,
and I see most clearly

my love for you
is sooner than now.

To be christened as such
is our promise.

Some tomorrow 
I’ll be older,
around a corner
once imagined,
to be remembered. 

So that was me
I’ll think, 
looking back. 

The slow voice,
the chiding
of my own future 
tense. 

Once I felt
myself turning,
the planet falling,
a blue globe,
the black field. 

Everywhere 
everything 
falling. 

All of us
snow,
the blizzard 
of humanity,
no two un-alike,
unlike true snow. 

I dreamt once
I fell in a garden 
and no one was there
to hear the sound
my heart made. 

cc: Chagall, 2026

I press the flower that Russell gave us when we first arrived,
When he let go your hand and ran to the daisies,
Plus the two the stranger girl gave us when we visited the chocolate shop in Clover,
Quite unexpectedly, pulling up in her car, leaning out her window and extending them to us, one for each of you,
Secure and flat in parchment paper, wedged in the collection of poems I bought in the bookstore off the corner by the railway station,
That day the never-ending train came through downtown,

And I imagine one day someone will find them,
Years after I’m gone, browsing through the shelves of my worn volumes,
the colors less but still vibrant, pulsing,
And will wonder what it all meant

cc: Chagall, 2026

Coming Down:
Rain.

Our neighbor is playing 
classic rock, 

a song
about cool…

cool rain.

A cardinal 
in the ginkgo tree calls,
tastes the rain.

All of life 
a downpour 
about me, I am lost 
as preordained,
in the rain. 

I am rain.

I am the scent
after rain,
the petrichor. 

The dew about
the petal, 
before rain.

Moonlight, 
peeking out…
a dream of rain.

I lie beside you, 
fall through 
your gravity,

You slide 
on your side 
to face me, up
on bent-arm,

You tap my forehead 
with your finger,
you ask,
What’s it like inside?

I whisper,
Rain.

cc: Chagall

Once
as a dog
at the side of the road,
with the aroma of 
the world whizzing by, 
I wished I could inhale forever.

cc: Chagall 2026

Nearby wind chimes 
or far away bells,
I can’t tell. 

Here on the porch,
wind spraying snow 
from the mounds about,

Gray and cold 
but beautiful, 
a backdrop for vibrant
Peeks of color.

Soon they say 
we’ll be rid of sacred days 
and every day will be business 
as usual.

The churn of tires in deep snow,
The splatter, the putter
Of rain where you live,
I am lost in the downpour 
Of you, in the flurry of you,
In the drifts, and the banks, 
And the slopes of you;

I remember your room, 
tucked under the loft, 
candles and candies, and
Incense and lace.

Let your voice go,
And I will play
strong chords 
beneath you;

Here is space,
A ground upon which
You can figure.

A bite
Of the apple of 
the eye of the storm,

My heart
At the end-of-day whistle;

The nearby wind
And the far away bells…

cc: Chagall 2026

I see the shape
of the wind in the trees,
The hand of God 
in the feathers of the bird,
I hear the eternal splash, 
the fall of water, 
the stream that marks the forest run,

Where the taste of infinity looms 
large on my tongue,

There I’ve touched the damselfly, reclined beside me on a warm rock,

Languid and at the tip of sleep, we both on the nod, this morning of the long shadow, this endless breaking day

Nothing but promise ahead,
The hope of time and ambition,
The call of endless possibility,
The intoxication, the breathless high

How long am I allowed
This quiet rapture
I call myself,
This solitude, this grace?

Once I thought
I saw father there
On the rock by the lake
Watching mother swim away. 

She receding
Into the break of night,
The shadows and stars
Of her time and place. 

A figment, some phantom,
The play of senses;

My own nonsense,
The cunning whisper
Of an inner voice. 

I pray to be here for the long haul,
Longer than my two sisters passed,
Than the older brother never known,
Gone in utero. 

I’m last on the summit,
With a clear view to the cold light. 

Watching the swimmers float by. 

Breathing as hard as I can,
Inhaling the blossoms whole,

Licking with outstretched tongue,
Each drop of dew. 

cc: Carlos Chagall 2026

I like to imagine 
she smiled, even laughed, 
her folly, rolling, the gentle hill,
shoulder o’er shoulder to rest 
where azalea meets lawn, face-up, 
the warm sun.

A bird sings,
pretty pretty pretty

The voice 
of the wind,
alluring, contralto.

Light brushes
on the canopy,
like cymbals,
keep time.

A damsel and a dragon-
fly flit away, stutter-step, near-
collision mid-air.

She unfolds,
blossom and pulse,
at the center, the source:

The aroma of grass
newly mown, pink buds open
against the blue.

And the clouds.

cc: Chagall 2025