Phyllis McGinley wrote:

"A Mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you."

Hand me Dowm Wagon

Hand Me down Wagon

I had a red wagon
handed down with twine
unraveling on the handle-
old photos tell me so.
The handle bent
as if to say:
“tie me to a bike,
journey me down any hill.”

Sometimes I’d crash;
black handle impacting
pushing into my chest.
Running home to mom
in pain, she, looking tired
oh so tired.

“Where’s the wagon, Tommy?”

Funeral Aroma

Funeral Aroma

I am hugged by perfume
Long after the bodies depart.
Wafting
Like exhaust from a plug-in mist;
As I zip and unzip my jacket.
These ladies that held me close
Out of remembrance for the dead
And me, yes me.

Sandwiches in triangles
Staked high among stale
Coffee and bad breath.
A priest walks table to table
Like a restaurateur saying:
I know most everybody here,
Yet draws a blank when he shakes
My hand. It could be the perfume
That does not match the man.

Quote: Josh Billings

Billings said, "There are many people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them."

And he said, "Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to."

Poem: Hibernation

Hibernation

When bear was hungry
She ate not a little. Salmon
Dead except for a twitchy fin-
A brighter pink when skins removed.
No filleting, bite and swallow.
The roaring rivers duality-
Claws once sticky are cleansed.

Salmon have no warning-
Spent from spawning
And collective memories
Of brutal leaps, they reside
To die. They nourish bear for full
Winters sleep.
Bears must dream salmon
Arching to create
A bounty in conjured splashings.

When bear wakes in spring
The cubs have a dream of land
Full of salmon and berries
And suckle sweet milk,
The torn fish warping with each gulp.

Quote

Francine Prose said, "For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on the bus."

Poem

What I was Knitted To

When I was knit
In my mother’s womb
Did God know
The mending tissue
Had been used nine times before
And that I would be a twin?
Mom, a three decade
Birthing machine-smoking
Each child and sipping Schmidt’s beer
To lubricate a dry birth canal.

The whispers of “no more” danced
Outside her depression and beliefs.

Wordsworth Quote

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart . . ."

--William Wordsworth