Alphabet City

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

Hummingbird,
I love you.

Flitting at the feeder, 
sipping sugar-water. 

A long quenching draft. 

You hover high, low,
left.  Right in front of me. 

Then lift-off — 
I watch you ascend;

I trace your zigzag, 
emerald and scarlet 
against shadowed pine,

until you meld 
with the sky and I 
see you no more. 

Away 
to southern clime. 

One full night, alone in flight…

Will you remember me,
the lilac, the holly left behind?

Someday I will 
fly beside you.

Under new constellations. 

Never more alive than
when in the warm updraft with you,
the moon on the gulf below,

and plentiful nectar near. 

cc: Chagall 2025

I should
sketch this rather
than write it.

Paint or sculpt it
even; 

odd…the music leaves
no trace, like a lyric and a score do,

I’d sing it,
not unlike a tree.

A sky is all
I need; a bright
wash of light,
sweet lemon near
the edges where
the senses and color
bleed.

I can always paint
this poem, this page, 
this book in my hand,
in my mind looking down
at these steps, 

gazing up
from this world, this pen, 
this brush, this bow, and
I live on.

cc: Chagall 2025

This is the morning of the long shadow,

the prelude to high noon, the evening of the banshee,

the dulcet pour of tears.

Around and ‘round, and when it’s dawn,

does the spirit rise?

The rain-trodden smile of Hope

peeks above her upturned collar,

below crinkled eyes along the crooked path,

searches for home, a quest for the hearth,

an urn for the soul…a table for two.

A one-way journey to an earlier moment,

and the one before that, the cascade of regret;

a sweater held up to the face, an inhale,

a longing.

How many pins can you stab

in the heart of a dancing angel?

See the cherubim flail on the lance,

run through when the light is lost,

when the end-day sirens blow,

and time runs down on slow dancers.

This is the melody of the canopy: the brush and bristle

of leaves and the wind’s whistles. I am enthralled

by the vigor of the spry zephyrs found here,

the overhead murmur of starlings. I dance a jig

on the head of a pine, atop its thistles.

From this vantage, silly and giddy,

I see all of creation.

At last, something to have died for.

So many objects in my life that I can no longer arrange or make right:

a knife, a bag, a clip, a tin, a half of this, a vial of that. 

Thrown here, about and there: a case, a  wire, an envelope, an unpaid bill…

crumbs. 

I fail to align these, to order them, to impart symmetry or pattern, only random strewn clutter,

the haphazard descent of things that fall where they may, where they might, when they can.

When all is said and done, after all is unspoken, when all is naught . 

Nary a pair or a trio or a quartet of anything anywhere any longer. 

The brevity of the silence rambles on, stalks my meandering, a dark figure in an alley, in the shadows beneath the muffled scream. 

The howl of a rooftop banshee, dulcet and wet in the downpour. 

This is the coming of the age, the upturned eye, the rain-trodden smile of hope. 

To sky, always dreaming, to a star never shone, to a universe, despite its eternal course, yet to collide. 

At the top, there is no friction, only free fall, where the Earth rushes to meet us

A failed glider knows, the last drop’s hardest, but such a sweet kiss touching ground. 

cc: CC 2025

I’d rather die at home,
before the picture frames,
the thirsty plants,
the unequivocal candlelight,
fade away.

The slanted ray of morning sun
lights my tree, the garden rake
and dripping hose,

the self-seeding blossom
that comes every year,
tall and straight since
the youngest stalk took hold,

in the earth,
deep and firm.

cc: CC 2024