Alphabet City

I bent to pick up a piece and feared
they thought I’d knelt to pray

Chagall 2019

And I will bring sweet late berries,
alit upon lips they’ll remind of first Spring,
on tongues the Summers, through the eye Autumn,
to the body Winter

Chagall 2019

I keep a lock of words
under my pillow, soft curls
of thought I gather around
my mind

Garrulous gossamer,
I dream on poems deconstructed,
raw diphthongs

whose rhymes are these, I once knew
…and miles of meter before I rest

I am
bic

Chagall 2019

(to be read aloud)
See how the change changes,
how the changed change?

Chagall 2019
(I never met a morpho sis I didn’t like)

returning to the house
I am aware of its presence
I see it there reflected
in the bay window lurking
behind me on the walk

mist and sound and feel become one
blur

we are what we taste – it whispers

Chagall 2019

While observing her ass in the mirror, I thought,
I wonder how the goldfish are doing?

Chagall 2019

I am awestruck by how hair absorbs water
Who designed such a flawless pairing?

Rainbows hatch in the falling beads,
the cascade of droplets
from the crown of the head
of the celebrant bent back

dipped to touch the water

Sunlight would find its way through
more readily then

Now most halos are
merely astigmatism

not magic

Chagall 2019

Peel off this haze,
help me to feel the rain

The rush of floodwater
compels me

Release, be awash!

Fingertips just miss,
they slip in the mist

Goodbye outstretched hand

Alone in the eddy, in the swirl
hunkered in, clenched down
on the tiller tightly

(Awaiting the falls)

I am the speck in the din of the roar,
a glint of ice in the throes of infernos

A tone resonates…overtones,
poignant intervals – the lost umbilical chord,
a heavenly chorale of angels afire with passion
awash in powder-blue dew

Life,
People

(Love is long)

Love is largest

Chagall 2019

Alone,
this sheet
of debris
falling in
black space
all around
everything
fallen
in situ
such so
we cannot know

how high were we before –
before descent
was a go…

how long ago?

before the pain
that precipitates
this – our longing for torpor

for deep sleep

at the edge
where existence ends
will we ricochet
and ascend?

Chagall 2019
 

I pretend today
that grandma’s alive,
in her flat just across
the bridge

It’s morning and
she’s having tea
with babka and butter
while sitting at
her front-room window
facing the life on the street
one floor below

She hums old folk tunes,
short lilts of melody with each exhale
punctuated now and then by a sip

I will call her today to tell her that I love her and
that Isabella and I will pick her up Friday at noon
to spend the weekend

To see the colors
of the fallen leaves

Chagall 2019