poem a day

At Sharkey's on Glenwood
they've got steamers and

spiedies three for a dollar

It was a highly orchestrated,

carefully determined day and time,

and after the tirade in the temple

moved the money changers to Wall Street,

and after the Tower of Babel fell, and the

cacophy of voices rang out from the 

Upper East side, this was certainly the

perfect place, the only place for his wedding.

He stares into the sky, a hesitant

bridegroom awaiting his bride. Does she

come on the wings of a dove or by plane?

No, by now the skies are empty of

all but smoke and shiny confetti

On today's hike the girl limps along an

uncertain path, startling a deer in the brush.

It bounds away, and she glimpses only a

flash of white above a sinewy hind leg.

A falcon soars overhead, a small mouse

clutched in its talons.

So unlike the pack of turkey buzzards with

their fleshy red wattles stuck in a holding

pattern over a distant hilltop.

So unlike the familiar hummingbird in

her backyard, hovering next to the

Daphne bush, whose tiny wings flap so

fast they are almost imperceptible.

When grandson scrapes his leg on a barbed wire fence,

love smells like blood and alcohol and two Sponge Bob

bandages used to gently cover the cut and calm his fears.

When my sisters and I return from our mother's funeral,

loves sounds like the twenty-four cannonballs you make

into the neighbor's backyard pool and the squeal of

our children's laughter.

Love feels like crossing a marathon finish line

for the first time. Sore, exhausted, exquistely happy,

and seeing in your face the reality of a piggy-back ride