Nightmare
I didn’t dream of you last night. I woke up screaming, bathed in sweat, gasping for breath, shouting, No! No! No! I didn’t sleep again last night, afraid to close my eyes. I lay there staring into the dark, thinking of you. Thank God. ♥
Prom Night
“Make it fast,” he said. I tried. “Officer,” I said. “This night is really important for me.” I broke the law. He knew it. I knew it. We both knew it. My girlfriend didn’t know it. I told her to give me a few minutes on the mezzanine level and she didn’t ask why. She…
The Night I Learned to Dance
I had good parents. They bought me dance lessons. Of course, the lessons they bought me never taught me how to dance. Oh, they taught me how to stand in a line with other boys facing a line of girls across the room and approach en masse to the girl directly across the room, bow…
Night Train to Bucharest
It’s been twenty-two years so I suppose I can tell the story. “We are living an important and fruitful moment now,” I said. “What?” she asked. I repeated the comment. “We are living an important and fruitful moment now.” “Is that a line from some play?” she asked me. “No,” I said. “I just made…
SP 4449
You want to see something? You want to hear something? You want to feel a thrill, a longing, a rhapsody of energy alive? Then do this: westbound thru Montana and behold the screaming soul of engineering coupled to the poetry of stamina and drive. Listen to the bell and stand aside. ƒ
Great White
It’s coming. They tell you it’s coming. You know it’s coming. It will come. You don’t know when exactly. It doesn’t matter. When it comes you’ll know. That’s soon enough. Well prepared are you? Everything in place? Ready to face it when it comes? No need to worry. You’ll find out soon enough. See you…
The Newday
I saw a Newday outside my window this very morning, striding up my street in plain sight, not so very plain. Brilliant in resplendent colors, glowing gold and burnished red, aflame with luster, sparkling with a panoply of stars retiring for the night, a Newday breathing fire ready for mortal combat against fear, fatigue or…
The Blind Poet
All poets are blind or should be, blind to the world they see, yet given sight to see what is invisible. All poets should stumble through other people’s lives, all the obstacles of a sighted world or what passes for sight. All poets should write about what they cannot prove because no one…
Twenty-Five Stars
We have a tradition at our home this time of year. On December First I put a star in our yard and another star in the yard north, south, east and west all around the house every day of the month until Christmas Eve. Then the twenty-fourth star goes up accompanied by the grandest star…
Family Tradition
My uncle Edwin Theodore Hansen, on my mother’s side was a general superintendent of heavy construction and chief of police. He liked to camp, because he was a general superintendent of heavy construction and chief of police. He had a cabin in the north woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and he often went…