Ukraine

I saw them through the open window. Spring brought them to my life and I felt life within me. A flight of geese pounding through the air breasts beating, hearts honking, wings cleaving all eternity toward me as I stood astonished and rushed outdoors to cheer them on their way. Winter came. The house burned.…

Pair of Queens

Although I have a fine sensibility for tradition, honor and luxury, I make a choice, having seen two queens approaching their respective one hundredth birthdays. One in a palace with a crown, surrounded by pomp and circumstance, protected and revered and another wearing a babushka in a damp cellar hiding from the bombs, illuminated by…

Matriculation

What you do is send your soul off to school. You know the day will come. You dread it in a way, selfishly wanting the child to stay at home, but you know there comes a time. So all neatly dressed and ready as you’ll ever be, shoes without a scuff, Big Chief pad, two…

I Saw Wonderful Things

Once I drove a school bus in Iowa. Quite a few times, actually, over a number of years. Out in the wild, wide places of time and place long, long ago and I had four little boys who rode my bus. The Vlegers. Their last name was Vleger as I recall and cannot forget and…

Florentino

There is a man who places linen and silverware on tables. He places linen and silverware on tables. That is what he does where people sit and eat. They spoil the linen and soil the silverware and they leave. This man removes once crisp linen and not too long ago spotless silverware and once again…

Titanic

Remember all those throes upon the slanting deck. Place yourself where you are placed by destiny and behold the craven acts of others, the heroics of some and take your measure upon the stage about to sink beneath your feet. Strike out, survive and live to tell what life meant when life sank unsinkable below…

Song To The Moon

Tell your people you love them. Once long ago I rode through the night and the radio brought me this message in a song. Dvorak’s Song to the Moon from the opera Rusalka. I cannot play it for you here, but when I heard it then the message came clear. Tell your people you love…

I Stopped For Green

There I sat, waiting for the light, absorbed in me. Oh the thoughts, the uninvited guests to my morbid feast, the unwelcome sons of bitches that have spoiled so many parties I’ve tried to throw, the bullies of my soul. I looked up and realized the light had gone to yellow. That means I stopped…

Comrades

Old friends, the time has come for us to part. I’ve worn you out, for all the times I’ve worn you out there working. Toes scuffed down to safety steel. Paint splattered on your desiccated uppers. How many laces did I break? Soles worn through completely like mine from time to time and me still…

Horizon Line

I come to where I started, ‘neath night and day travailed between the stars and earth, a birth canal of freedom into a world known only to the Maker and to me. I stand now where I started upon bended knee, not in subjugation, but in homage to all I’ve seen. This line, this commencement,…