The snow's fallen
for three hours straight
and will fall for another twelve.
They’re those tiny flakes,
little icy pinpricks,
that can sting your cheeks
should you venture out
into their deepening realm.
I saw their scouts edging in
from Schenectady, so small
and light I was unsure
if my old eyes were seeing
what really never was again.
I guess, in a way, they were.
The flakes have flipped direction now,
except for down,
as if Monsieur Coreolis toppled
my windowpane snow globe.
Me.
Here.
Inside.
You,
looking out
your window.
So tell me,
why do my cheeks sting?
These Dreams I Dream
I think I’ll give up
these dreams I dream,
the waking ones where
I’m happy, if ever I seem.
They lie on my chest
each night as I pray,
disappear as I sleep
and then comes new day,
where I face the truth
I never was nor will
be the one in your dreams
if you’re dreaming still.
My name on your shelf
and always on your mind.
But I’ve given up ‘cause
I never will be the kind
who could make you happy,
so happy as you might be.
Such dreams are for others
and others don’t include me.
A "Boom! There!" poem that took ten minutes and a couple of decades to write.
Food for Thought
The bookstore’s funny place.
Most of the time when you walk inside,
it smells like a loud library.
All that paper and ink and glue
is a heady brew
to the people walking down the aisles,
squinting through scrunched expressions
while searching for the right name or
the right color. It’s as if they
lost their way and wandered
into a supermarket or corner grocery,
trying to find some fresh something
to feed their bodies. Only in the bookstore,
it’s their souls and minds growling
for sustenance. Though a latte
would be nice, don’t you think?
Have you seen this?
My take on a "food" poem.
Photo by Umar Al Farouq on Unsplash
It Ain’t Nomenclature
My name, one might say, is common as mud,
ubiquitous once, seen everywhere.
I’m the third in my line, it’s in my blood,
and if that makes it common, I don’t care.
When I was a kid, my name could be spied
above doors and windows all over town.
A gin mill, that deli, the market’s side,
just stand on the corner and spin around.
As I got older I thought I needed
a cooler name, like a nom de guerre.
But my sword’s a plume, my field conceded,
and this writer, Trey, you won’t find anywhere.
So yeah, my name’s old school, but did you know…?
I feel so uncommon when you say, “Oh, Joe.”
The task this week was to write a poem related to the idea of "common." You see what happened when I sat to it. One of my oh so common sonnets.
The Warmer Wings of Winter
My cheek sizzles where
the wind slapped it.
This complicated duet
I share with winter reaching
its crescendo, both of us
howling, and only one
using words. No one can hear
them above the roar
from the northwest. Mine
sprinkled with cusses
the way the wind's is specked
with frozen conversations
between Lakes Erie and Ontario.
My left foot shoots
an extra step ahead of the right
as I trundleslide the trash bins
up the driveway from the road,
banging my knee on icy blacktop.
That changed my tune.
Behind the house I hear
kids sledding where I once
slipped on the as-yet hidden
luge track and cracked the rib
above the one I cracked
the year before.
I stand the bins like
nutcracker guards and clump
back inside, where all is warm
and quiet except for the wind’s
hum over the roof and the faint
choir of kids enjoying the secret
gravitational pull of time
racing with them to the bottom,
where old men smile and recall
when they too flew on the somehow
warmer wings of winter.
Photo by Paige Vondoersten on Unsplash
Just a Second Or Two Ago
I have it set to Silent
but you could probably
hear the buzz in my pocket
if you were close enough.
I tend not to let that happen,
since I more often than not
pull the phone out and
open the Messages app
just before "Joe..." pops up
and we begin using words
where none were necessary
just a second or two ago.
Some might call this
coincidence, others would say
dumb luck, while romantics
would clutch their pearls
and whisper “soul connection.”
But it doesn’t need a name or
definition. It’s just how when
the music starts, your heart
can feel some other beat calling
and a certain face fills your
head space where life was blank
just a second or two ago.
Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash.
Shadows of Solitary
Each day the window frames
the same picture —
three slender oaks, five stout pines
and sundown’s slice of western sky.
At night, moonshadows of
the trees crawl up the side
of the house to your window,
through which they can peek in
your room while you peek out.
If you turned from that frame
to face the wall opposite,
you too could see your silhouette
on the closet door, held in
its tree-shadowed cell, where
imagination hides the key in a cake
made of dreams and wishes, and
a pillow makes a poor substitute
for the one you wish baked it.
No, Not Yet
Their backs hunch,
as if waiting for
the final blow to fall.
Out on a limb,
some shudder from
the freeze coursing
their shaking spines.
Yet still they hold on,
never knowing when
the weight of winter
will finally overcome
what the storms of
their youth could not.
I don’t envy them
their quiver and shake,
their shiver and quake,
having turned my back
on fear of falling away
from you long ago, when
death stood, rake ready
to haul me away
to the same loam
these oak leaves await,
the forever-winter inevitable.
No, not yet.
My attempt at writing a "fear" poem, though inspired by watching the russet oak leaves, with their "not yet" death-grip clinging to the branches, braving today's winter storm. If you know my story from a few years ago, you know where this piece came from. Photo by Me.
All I’ve Left for You
He misses the days when he’d walk
with the river’s song in his head.
Woodwind and string swirling
and lyrics by whatever
sang upwind that day.
Now he sits and recalls only
the ghosts of those times when
noon lay open to interpretation
and that touch he felt
was summer’s caress
or winter’s slap upon his cheek.
Each could bring on tears,
since they weren’t her touch.
When he’d come to the bridge,
he’d see where the birds lived and died,
leaving feathered reminders for us
on the stones of their having been.
Something like what I’ve left here
for you.
Don’t ask how or why. It’s just another feather to keep among all the others I’ve shed for you.
Dead Leaves, Kangaroos and Rabbit Ears
The snow squall made the view
through my back window look
like our our old RCA’s little
black and white screen
after the National Anthem
played around midnight and
before the Indian-head
test pattern card would
pop up on the screen
around dawn, howling
it’s single note song.
I’d silence it with a turn
of the VOL knob before
it woke everyone in the house
and the wooden box with
Captain Kangaroo inside
ping-ponged back to life.
Why a howling northwest wind
full of crystalized
Lake Erie stirred 1950s
memories out of the swirling
First of December in my brain,
I don’t know. But it made
the unraked dead leaves of
forgotten days disappear and
for that and visions of this
gray scale Bugs Bunny —
and other rabbit ears —
I’m most grateful.
A Thing for Words 