
Tears of Philly
I shed a lot of tears in Philly,
the grist of the gristle,
the crude and the earthy
It was my home for years,
my identity and place of persecution
The sports pages were full of me,
the cold, dark box scores
chronicle my failures,
my shutouts, and lack of production
My name was etched in the fabric of William Penn’s hat,
buried in Ben Franklin’s grave,
alongside of a Mario Lanza mural
Frank Sinatra sung a melancholy song about me
The Eagles flew in Kelly-green jerseys,
chanted in painted faces with cheesesteak hats,
climbed the steps of the Art Museum,
tailgated on cold Sunday mornings
I was once dry-walled to the city,
nailed to the Walt Whitman Bridge,
swinging from the chandelier of the Chrystal Tea Room
My DNA was cemented into the red bricks of Citizen’s Bank
I was in the stands when the dunk hit the back of the rim,
and on the rooftops when the bombs exploded.
An Aura Remains
Darkness hovers like a smoky cloud
Crows have scattered from the trees,
leaving several black feathers behind
and the shrieking caws of grief
The rose in front of the door has wilted
The mourners sit motionless
in the anteroom of their loss,
waiting for the shadow of his face
and the footsteps to be heard
The husband’s vehicle remains
parked in his favorite spot
He washed the car on Saturday
and took family trips to the shore
that no one could replace
Now, the only thing that’s left
is the aura of the man that passed
An aura that never leaves
A spirit that can’t be released.
San Simon Rest Stop
I found a rest stop
traveling across the Arizona sun
where the bathrooms were clean
and the hand sanitizers full
I stretched my legs,
watched the pale blue sky
and a few lazy clouds
drift along with cacti and tumbleweeds
The wildflowers blew on the hillsides
making the mountains yellow
with a western breeze
Here in the desert nirvana
the twirl of my tongue rattles like a snake-
the tarantulas welcome me
with a nice silky gift.
His Last Vignette
My father loved the smell of beer,
the salty stale pretzels,
and the pigs’ feet floating in a jar
He loved the neighborhood saloon,
small-town men with fat bellies
and balding heads, telling of their salvation
while serving in the war
My father loved the freedom of the stool,
the way it turned but never spun off
He loved his mom and dad tattoos,
and his crooked jaw,
broken during the Korean War
He loved to tell how he stood
with the Honor Guard in Leghorn, Italy,
marched with the Queen’s drummers
in London, England,
and counted the thousands of crosses
of the Unknown Soldiers
As my father told his last vignette,
he put down his drink,
took a drag of a Lucky
and grabbed his balls
while the ceiling fan circled
his immortalized youth.
An Ancient River
An elderly mother lives in a corner duplex,
surrounded by untrimmed green hedges
An easterly breeze occasionally blows
from an ancient river
In the spring, she plants tomatoes,
patiently waiting for them to ripen,
picking each gently from the stem,
and cradles a half-dozen in her apron
In the summer, she sits on a folding chair
with her legs dipped in a kiddie pool,
a pool of motherhood
where the waves of painful memories
ebb and flow
She imagines her son as a boy,
splashing in the shallow water,
sailing his wind-up motorboat,
his eyes green and hair a light brown,
his youthful skin glistening from the sun
As she dips her toes into the fresh water,
under a little beach umbrella,
she gives a wistful smile
A lifetime of raising a stillborn child
few people would ever know.

Reblogged this on The Reluctant Poet and commented:
Come Enjoy!
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