Category Archives: poetry

antique shop (by my great-grandmother)

From my great-grandmother’s poetry book, Where Children Live (1958). By Alice B. Johnson (and with it I learn we have a shared love of antiques!!)

Antique Shop
I shall pretend that I have come to buy
A walnut highboy from New England way–
An alabaster trinket box in which
To tuck my precious jewelry away.

A ruby goblet or a Spode tureen–
A lovely fragile Dreseden figure or
A silver coffee pot, a Sheffield tray–
Perhaps a shiny knocker for my door.

Which shall it be? I can’t make up my mind
Until another time (so I’ll pretend),
And none will know, but I, that in my purse
There’s just one silver dollar I may spend.

regrets are like evergreens

outside he blames
cold snowy weather
clinging to evergreens,
white fingers so close,
those white hands
struggling to find a way,
gentle soft falling down
to rest on frozen ground

outside he waits
waits till seasons change
yet evergreens persist
they make him angry
those ghost white hands,
pine needles, red bleeding,
spring leading summer
but evergreens remember

he walks
wishes time away
his beard grows long
he sings by heart the song
of pines rustling in the wind

outside he sits
buttoned for another
a long hibernation
like a gnarled old bear
his New Year knows all
none can change this
only steadfast everygreens–
they never let him sleep.

[author note: circa the “degas ‘three dancers’ journal 2003” – an admitted total break from my usual style]

coming home from the beach (impossible)

i left the ocean
crashing pulling, so
oblivious, and i
dragged my wreck of
salt and hair and
said goodbye to the
grains and shells
the jellies,
surfers skaters punk kids
drunks,
drove out thinking, one
child builds a fortress and
guards it with her life
while the other runs
with knowledge that high
tides will always win…
left driving
with “flashback weather classic rock”
and tried to set in motion:
the impossible comes to life.

bass player at The Horse You Came In On

Angelo playing inside
these filthy walls since ’90
no longer plays to the walls
but is the walls
is the smokeyceiling
theneonlights thehanging
plants
the thuddrumthuddrum
thuddrum comeon !

all us hangingvines
pour the cobblestones
drink seasons moldy classics
become bassline players like Angelo
slowly slowly over time, thuddrum
thuddrum comeon !