09 Tuesday Apr 2019
Tags
I don’t know
what
angelic aerodynamics were involved
in sending Christ from his Father’s
right hand to Mary’s womb
but when my son took
off toward his grandparents at
140 knots my heart leapt
to follow with stubby wings
which floundered
in his wake and I
wasn’t even sending him
to be crucified
only coddled by flight
attendants who knew
exactly who
he was.
08 Monday Apr 2019
07 Sunday Apr 2019
When our office switched from recyclable
cups to sustainable mugs my boss
said she never pours tea into coffee
mugs because coffee was a thoughtless
guest who never, really, leaves, like
there’s always one sock left under
the couch to be found six months later.
I shrugged because I’d never found so
much as a quarter beneath the cushions.
Jesus, too, warned against pouring new
wine into old wine skins lest they burst
and stain the carpet but my coffee
mug has never
yet
cracked.
07 Sunday Oct 2018
Tags
In the water park they gather
beneath its tilting lip,
their bodies sway with waves
held high in the cauldron perched above
their heads, swinging further deeper drip by drip
until gravity overtakes anxiety
falls, crashes against hunched shoulders
or upturned faces and just misses the feet
of the boy afraid of.
But in the future he crafts a future
from the backseat after school
knowing someday our feetprints will shape
the face of Mars which takes
a lot of water and a lot of air
that someone will have to carry
in maybe a big bucket like at the park
carried by bigger rockets but the air
might escape so the bucket will need a lid.
01 Sunday Jul 2018
Tags
There are few opening lines more pretentious than
‘I have a hot tub’—maybe ‘I don’t own a TV’ or
‘I read The Economist’—but it’s true and anyway
it’s for my wife’s fibromyalgia and it was on sale
and there’s no other way to explain the leaves that
become trapped and float unnoticed to the surface
sink beneath the jets lost in the flotsom to wind
between our toes and lay at the bottom of this
chemical bath dying as we relax color fading like
an astronaut without oxygen who can’t keep her
eyes open as the warnings flash 15 10 5 3 percent
red through her eyelids but she’s long since succumbed
to an isolated slumber and slipped down to death to
wind between God’s toes, a leaf in the filter but
he still knows her name.