Selected Poems

Monument Mountain

Sometimes while driving home
I’ll see a great shoehorn in the sky.

Sometimes while driving home
I’ll see a cloth of clouds
polishing over that high bluff and rock,
as if it were getting a good shine.

Sometimes while driving home
I will remember
how I polished my dad’s shoes
when I was a child.

He paid fifteen cents a shoe.
I thought it was a good deal
then and I still do now.

He even adjusted for inflation.
I got a nickel more every year,
and then it became a dime.

Then sometimes I’ll be driving home
and think
how the mountain and the man
have become the same.


Driving East

In winter
the vineyards
of western Pennsylvania
are entangled
brown and wiry
arms over shoulders,
chorus girls
dancing down
the line.


Oil Stains

Sitting back like an astronaut
I look up into a light that shines
like the shell of an oyster.
I see Lori
my dental hygienist
appear on the horizon
of my mouth.
She is wrapped in gear
and her small tool is singing
like a chainsaw
only from many octaves
away.
She is the only one
I know
who can work
in pajamas
and get
away with it.

Later, walking out,
I pass small rooms
where people are
lying about
and think back to a time
perhaps during the Civil War
when patients struggled
and the doctor
lurched from those rooms,
exasperated,
his chest red with blood
the way oil stains
a piece of
cardboard.


Frosty

My little yellow lab
six months old
dives into dark water
fetches tree limbs
as thick and long
as a man’s arm,
gets back out
walks like a wrestler
his little jellybean
eyes
burning,
his ear flaps
slapping
the sides
of his head
like two
wallets
happily
spending.


Airborne

Being with Suzanne
dancing the tango slowly
across the room.

She puts her hands on my chest,
I guide with my weight,
leaning forward and back.

We are like a dandelion seed
that never seems to land.



Travelling with Willy!