TOUCH
Reed slim behind the counter,
red shirt casting a warm glow
on his carved dark features,
the young man waited
with the other wait staff
for the breakfast trade to arrive.
I dined on scrambled eggs and diced ham.
Alone, my eyes roamed idly, catching
stray movements, not really spying.
In the course of my meal
I watched the tall young male
lay hand on each woman worker:
an arm around the waist
of blonde ponytail, shoulder pat
to middle-aged senora,
hug and squeeze to the dark-haired
hostess who squeezed him back.
His index and middle fingers
massaged the cashier's neck,
mock arm punch rattled
a sturdy young woman.
I wondered at the outcry
if I said loudly, Keep your hands
to yourself, young man!
Then pictured my tomcat
marking territory at home.
STRING FIGURES
Traces of England in her voice,
clever fingers weaving a spell,
Audrey holds the fourth graders entranced.
With strings of every thickness and hue,
she makes more than cat's cradle:
dragons swish tails, clock hands move,
rabbits hop, a sword rises from stone.
Eyes wide, children find their fingers
gain skill after the first fumbles.
All that year they make string figures
at recess, in class, at home for siblings.
Audrey's pea green jute bag, bought in 1969,
is stuffed with wallet, keys, three balls of string.
On the outside, depicting her poem, beige yarn
forms a Siberian house, two fleeing people.
Tucked in a sleeve, jammed in that pea green bag,
trailed from a pocket, circling her wrist,
the String Lady's loop of cord brings stories and songs,
the children's own history, to vivid life.
BIRTHDAY POEM TO MY SON
My birthday comes tomorrow,
yours trails one day behind.
Swollen and gasping in my twenty-sixth winter
I awaited the crowning of your fuzzy black head.
All those years of loving, too few shared events,
now you're in your middle years. We email.
Cheery notes bounce against satellites,
tales of bodily woe. When did I stop knowing you?
Have you ever known me?
PLAYING IN THE SPRINKLER
The boy's footsteps, ragged
as his t-shirt is torn, carry him
through dandelions and bright summer grass
to lean against a maple tree
and watch. In the sprinkler
two small children scream and splash.
their mother, red hair flying,
shorts damp from the play,
beckons him to come join the fun.
Black eyes pooled with pain
in a mocha brown face, he edges
near the spray. Flinches when water
strikes his body. The mother
catches the shudder,
cups his chin, falls into his eyes.
Show me, she whispers, voice gentle as feathers.
his belly and chest seared black
as hot dogs too long on a grill,
the blistered skin peels away
from pink flesh. The mother
sinks to the ground where water beads
can't reach, cradles the burned child
in loose arms. Tries not to drip
salt tears on his seeping wound,
sends her water sprites to the house
for the cell phone.
THAW
Brain frozen as though in river ice,
my pen an oar shoving against air,
long weeks of ideas buried like old frogs
in the mud of a village pond then
one morning I feel a stir
deep in the bowl of my belly, cast
my mental eye aside, afraid
to scare it away
and wait, breath held, for the subtle lift
like air bubbles climbing stems
of eel grass as one word, then another,
breaks the water's skin
and, like a hatch of mayflies,
images explode.
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