Chicago June

The day slows after a sleepless night,
and conversation arrives like whale song.
The watery lullaby reminds me—
we hear without words, we understand.
Outside leaves shift in a humid breeze
and the milky light of a summer morning.
Later the sun’s rays will burn unimpeded,
but now, a neighbor sits on his steps,
reads the paper, raising his head only
when air conditioners [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Mumiah At His Post

In the last village,
each day sees one birth, one death.
One citizen counts,
awaiting his day
marking tallies on a wall
at the edge of town.
Only he stares out
into bare plains, eyes searching
for dust not raised by
twisting wind or hope.
When he dozes, dreams visit,
hearts of suns beating
in the black heavens, much too
numerous to count.

Haiku Sonnet: Conservation of Mass

In a sky of souls
angels might wear wings, harps might
sing in flight, but I
hear unspoken words
calling atoms, commanding
everything to
return. Inventions
clutter horizons—I strain
to see beyond them—
and furniture blocks
every path. Strangers watching
snow from their windows
turn to take it in and find
no room for gathering
I’m indebted to a play I appeared in some years ago, Ionesco’s New Tenant.

Haiku Sonnet: Homing

Leave absence behind
and you find red brick, white wood,
and every other
material to
house us.  We have so little
to trap us here, such
paltry hollows for
our hearts—these buildings don’t last.
One early morning,
glimpsing an empty
world and shirking my skin, I
saw life without us—
voiceless but for wind—flowing
through a sky of souls.

13 Ways of Looking at Snow*

I.
Back to the window
I untangled shadows, guessing
snowy branches were
arthritic fingers
knuckled by age and frozen
mid-reach.
II.
Where he’d shoveled snow
the sidewalk looked like feathers,
his motion still there
in the sweep of wings.
III.
Snow falling two ways:
as a shower of stars or
as all the heavens
falling together.
IV.
Snow—verb and noun, snow
drifting and settling.
V.
A day in the sun
and snow sags—the fanciful
swans of the morning
bent [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Walking to Work

In a store window
I’m a form drifting amid
traffic, not—as in
photographs—younger,
but older, my future ghost.
I look for angles,
anticipating
my face averting its eyes
or steering itself
into a place where
the world flattens to one pane
and the soul swims
in its layer, transparent,
now finished with time.

Supersomething

Sometimes at the dinner table my family talks about what superpowers we’d like. Though you’d think one such conversation would be enough, someone is always ready to add new insight.
“The trouble with invisibility is clothes. What do you do with them? You can’t wear them—you’d be seen. You can’t [...]

Haiku Sonnet: The Fetch*

Uncle claims a fetch
stands at the edge of his wide
mouth of sight. The least
turn scares a fetch, but
Uncle talks loudly. “Who joins
in when the song’s quiet?”
he says, and his fetch
harmonizes. Each morning
they wake together,
mattress edge twins.
Uncle stands to let the fetch
follow. This dance was
never new, each day doubles.
Uncle’s nod agrees.
*This poem [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Urban September

art by Maria Cavacos
A bright evening—
the city-planted trees reach
into plots of light, and
dog walkers wander
between the bare faces of
buildings. As far as
you can see, the street
travels straight, the earth travels
round, and the sun wanes.
No poem will stop it.
A car with a faulty fan belt
shrieks nearby. A child—
expecting locusts—turns
and sees me watching.

Haiku Sonnet: Azrael

With its parts absent
my watch tells time differently.
Moments pick moments.
My impulses knot
according to a logic
indiscernible,
and earth’s orbit rests
and rolls as it pleases. Light
has quit. Memory—
finally—rules time.
Now each juxtaposition
is an echo, each
circle around this blank face
closes on itself at last.