Photos

Time seems to cuddle
two shores — before death
and after.

You’re young, the moon
curls around your face
and you smile.

The background is
Niagara Falls, winter,
seagulls against snow.

You sip Chardonnay, consume
bread slips and cheese,
punctuate each moment

with a laugh, regurgitate
tales from the latest
case against traffic

in the inner core.
You applaud mass transit,
mass machinations of

people owning the environment.
The cough arrives later,
somewhere after the annual

sleigh rides through
Mennonite country,
wineskins depleted

and retirement, the parties,
the accolades, the evenings
in palliative care

when we visited, you
trailing tubes, stating
that you were past

your best before date,
gasping for each breath,
the rhythm slowing

like a dance winding down
into faltering steps,
you dancing on until.

Hand and Jaw

There’s harmony
that until now
I never saw

between a child’s
tiny hand
and a dog’s
strong jaw.

The hand reaches
down with a
bit of food

the jaw accepts
without being rude.

The Genesis of Names

A name is sound
                                waves breaking against
 conversations                      more
                quickly than
letters littered on birth certificates

and wind
                                abrading wine glasses
                glistening moon
the beach              each grain of sand’s
identity written by flutes.

Credit

Charge the cell phone and
the dormant car.  Fluorescent
kitchen lights preface
morning, catch first coffee’s
inky charm.  Charge out
and charge the breakfast
sandwich with sausage in
the bustling square of Tim’s.

A Farewell To Poets

their voices clamor, insistent
though dead, hoarding silenced

histories —  poems rampant
resident behind closed

eyes — they angrily shuffle from
literature’s harsh pitch —

writers, blessed enough to endow
each word with a long-lived life.

Distraction

In a world of many,
what focus is there on one;
I listen to a child’s problems.
The phone rings.