Legacy

[First appeared in The Avalon Literary Review, Spring 2016]

Some days, usually in summer
when the light is right, and my mind is quiet,
I’ll pass a street that looks familiar;
its straight trees plotted in parkways,
their trunks just wide enough for a boy to hide behind,
and think of my grandfather.

Before the hospital gowns and ice chips
when he remembered my name
and every walk was an adventure—
before he grew small.

“What is it that the sign says, Markey?”
“Words can be weapons or keys.”
An honest, “please” could buy a Chiclet
or a gum ball. A careless curse
could cost the balance of a day.

Open books on park benches,
breadcrumbs for birds.
I listened in as David took the giant
and read aloud as Odysseus took to sea.

“With a word, God spoke the world into existence.”
Doubt is death and I was very much alive.
I’d seen Ali Baba speak an entrance to a mountain
and climbed Olympus before I’d ever seen Spot run.

Bird Watching

Upon a light barked limb of birch
a sparrow and a robin perch.
The robin shifts, the sparrow cries,
tilts his head, takes stock, then flies.

From an oak not far away
comes a bluebird and a jay.
The bluebird there to poach a nest,
the jay, simply to taunt and test.

The robin ready to give song,
protests briefly, moves along.
While hidden in the leaves above,
caws a raven, coos a dove.

One for Tracy

No idiot gods or platonic blackbirds
just solid stone and old shoes—
another walk to work.

The sky is the gray
it’ll stay all January,
the cold, slow to arrive.

There are barges on the river
long arms, cranes
to lift stuff up.

Today I tried to count them,
the bridges repaired
the buildings born,

the union men
smoking in circles—
too many for the task.

It all seems so normal
till you look up
and the sun itself

is dwarfed by structure—
mundane creations,
magic works of man.

Toward the North

This is a season unspent:
there will be snow yet and storms.
Today’s cold recalled
a mere discomfort
and the bite of this wind, but a kiss.

If I prophesy spring
will you pretend to believe me?
We can blanket each other
in warmth for a time.

With the moment eclipsed
by the cold truths of winter,
will you smile me strong
as I frown toward the north?