Category Archives: Poems

Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. WW II, 1939-45. Fast forward and there I am at 16, walking to Bradford Junior College from high school, along the bridge across the Merrimac River.  (I’ll then go home with my father after he’s finished teaching.) There we are marching down the main street of Haverhill, all in whiteContinue reading “Virtual Photos II”

6 Feb. 2017 Interlude  I’m sitting at my desk, reading Berger. A curious tickle on my wrist distracts me from the page. Perched on my cuff is a small shield-shaped insect – wonder where he came from – his long feelers sounding the terrain. He’s brown, actually quite handsome, but I deem it best toContinue reading “Interlude”

On seeing a bat (May 1993?) Feb. 3, 2001 The shadows in the room were layered Like watercolor washes From pale grey to almost black. A flutter – not heard – but seen. The darkness shivered and unloosed a fragment of the deepest shade. It darted silently from left to right in swooping arcs thenContinue reading “Bats”

Apartment for Rent: I had been away almost a year and now needed a place to live. I was outstaying my welcome with a college girfriend and evidently the gods were in my favor. At the time East 71st St. between 1st and 2nd Avenue, with its blind windows barricaded behind iron fire escapes andContinue reading “From California to Italy and back to NYC”

January 2, 2004 Another day begins. Set patterns of behavior govern our every move. Demands, requests, solicitations. Wandering attention is quickly brought back into line. Vines etched against a pallid sky. Golden oaks tossing in the wind. Coffee wafts through the air the cup warming our hands. The chill of morning kept at bay byContinue reading “Poet”

1955 I had my degree and it was time to venture into the future. It started with a stint at a museum in Long Beach, California, before taking off for Europe. There wasn’t all that much to do in the town and about the only thing that was interesting was the beach with tankers loomingContinue reading “California Impressions”

Sounds March 8, 2021 Sounds that were and no longer are Sounds that are and then were not Velcro The click of the camera shutter The third avenue El. Memories of the past. But then there  is also The wail of a baby crying A sound now lost in yesteryear As the baby becomes a man. OtherContinue reading “Sounds”

I suppose I could have gone to Boston but I think I just wanted to get away from home. Besides which there was really no home any more for my parents had sold the farm and were living in a trailer. Logically, it was NY that beckoned and I had a possible contact in theContinue reading “New York City”

  Perceptible, but barely. The sound of a petal dropping from the full-blown rose on my computer tower.  We wait a whole year for that one brief moment of beauty, Francesco had said. But what about the other kinds of beauty, the other stages in growth and development, not just the flowering?  Another petal drops.Continue reading “The Sound of a Petal Dropping”

If I had had my camera out If I had had more time If I had been on my own And not running to catch the train to Zurich In the station of Milan. I would have taken at least two photos. One of a scraggly unleafed tree Waiting for someone As it sat onContinue reading “Tree and Girl”

Our farm was a real farm. Almost a hundred acres with pasturelands, fields and a hemlock grove with a brook.  It was at the end of a dirt road with a big red barn and a white clapboard three-story house with a couple of porches entrances over on the right. The mailman would come onceContinue reading “Goats”

A lady. The only word that suits the woman in the picture. Head held high, lips parted, gazing past me, into…what? A fur coat draped around her shoulders, evening gown cut low, a bare arm crosses, clutching white gloves to her breast. One earring glitters half hidden by a wave of hair. Her only jewels.Continue reading “Penelope III”

McIntosh. An apple of which there is no other.  Surely, that was the apple the wicked witch gave to Snow White. Round, red, perfect. Juicy, asking to be eaten. We had an orchard with over 80 trees on our 98-acre farm in Massachusetts. When harvest time came, my sister and I and the whole family wentContinue reading “Apple Orchard”

Boxes. That you had put in storage. Your past life lies scattered in the yard. Their contents, still remembering your touch wrapping each pot and pan each cup and dish with determination, anger at your fate, at false friends, betrayals, rueful yet relieved to leave it all in newspapers now stiff and yellowed. I goContinue reading “Penelope II”

Penelope (January 1995) – Part I All those things that once you looked at daily, used, took so much for granted you no longer saw them, unaware of their existence, appendages, hands, hammer, knives, tools feet, shoes, carpets vertebras and muscles chairs, tables teeth pots and pans and dishes the ensemble of your mind andContinue reading “Penelope”

(Feb. 20, 2021) Where has the handshake gone? That sign of trust, of human contact. Strong, firm, fleeting,   Warm, pulsating, limp and cold. Saying more than just a physical contact. Protective, as in Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride. Welcoming, forgiving as in his Return of the Prodigal Son. Clasping, grasping, as with Rodin’s anatomical studies. An emanationContinue reading “Hands”

Museum. Architecture for people – without people.  (2000 and November 2004) White rooms, doorways leading to other white rooms. Pictures, straight-edged, in the straight-edged architecture of the rooms. Muffled voices in the carpeted room. Intermittent sounds detaching from what should have been the underlying silence. A hum persistent low key elusory pervasive inescapable. Barely perceptible.Continue reading “Museum Hum”