[First appeared in The Avalon Literary Review, Fall 2014]

My well runs deep and dry;
pebble-bottomed pit,
broken glass among the rocks,
the occasional coin, some sad soul’s wish
left in the company of cold, dry, stone.

I would if prompted recount a fiction
of strangers passing, full buckets, and refreshment;
of the joys of spring, a shaded canopy
and welcome offerings.

Redact the sunlit horror
of spitting children and the piss
of careless parents.

Their monstrous visage increased by time;
lifelessly growing, refusing to die
with fonder recollection; lost,
like meager moisture hoarded,
hidden, then dried.

(first appeared in “The Lyric”, Volume 73, No.1  – Winter 1993)

Poor me, we cry, then wash our hands;
this world of ours makes such demands
and no one knows just where we stand
and so we stand for nothing.

For now we hold, as science shows:
that nothing is and no one knows.
Our course is cast upon the flows
of, from, and back to nothing.

We build our castles by the sea
and conscious of the irony,
ignore the tides of destiny
as if we thought them nothing.