Found a poem,left by a officeron the sidewalkof an unnoticeable building.Like the City’s violation checkerstuck a vivid ticketin your windshield,but for passerby.What did the poet say?We are made of carbon,all in our current formsby chance.By creation.By conspiring.
Tag: making a life
Claiming Days as our Own, 2021
I tell everyone how
I share a birthday
with the Reverand Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Though we commemorate it
on a moving Monday.
I celebrate both.
I claim the whole month.
Country songs ask us
to live like we are dying.
Which we all are.
Our birthdays point out
someone changed their lives
rapidly, seismically, for ours.
My father-in-law loves to say
his birth marks an anniversary
of Mother Teresa’s, though it’s really
her baptism date, another kind of birth.
Now we have twins
starting their 3rd year
on their 2nd birthday,
the last day in February
on a non leap-year.
After the wildest two
years of our lives:
birth,
pandemic,
election,
marches,
and otherwise.
Where You Are
You want to be
in two places at once,
or two strong people
each want you
in their places.
Something about this
rips out your lungs.
Though you have two,
they’re connected.
Breathe,
until you settle
all where you are.
A Few Kind Words
That mattered.
Thank you.
Sticky, raw,
and here’s love.
We’re always waiting
for our dreams to shatter,
connect
in the present moment,
in another person’s eyes,
in truth.