Stevie's Law

My poem, Hall of Fame, is up on Silver Birch Press today as part of their Landmark Series. Here is the poem:

Hall of Fame
We were not
a wayfaring
family.

My dad drove
a taxi nights
while mom worked days

at a discount store
downtown.
How is it

no one speaks
of the weariness
of the poor?

A six-block trip
to the local
chop suey joint

after a double
feature
was quite a night.

But the summer
I turned 12
dad announced

a vacation
to Cooperstown
at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

There was not
a boy in all
of Brownsville

that didn’t envy
me that trip.
And, yes I milked it.

The three of us made
a week of it.
meandering through

the back roads
of New England—
admiring all that green,

while my dad
spoke of Ty
and Babe—

Honus and Christy
and Walter as if
speaking of old friends

and my mom
told me of my grandfather—
a man I never got to meet.

And the Museum?
Well that was
wonderful too.

Aeolian

When I was a young man
I’d take to the shore—
counting on the salt-slap
of wind off the North Atlantic
and the emptiness
of that unearthly horizon
to rouse me
from a melancholy
that held me bone deep.

It was best
when the weather
was foul—
sky teaming with
ocean to perform—
arousing a primal fear
like the snap of ozone
almost overwhelming.

Today, as far from youth
as I am from the sea,
I take an ancient trail
to the peak of Wind Gap—
above the tree line
of oak and hemlock.

The trail is steep
and slick in spots
and as I struggle up
I wonder, out loud,
how man could have
conquered McKinley.

City bred,
I am outside my ken—
the hilltop scoured
of all life
might well be on Mars.
But the view is breathtaking.
The locals say
you can see three states
from here
and that the wind—
strange and strong
and cold as December,
can turn you around.

I’ve two poems published today by the RavenPerch. Here is the first

Sonder

Dad would never
let on how he got
his nickname.

Even mom, who used
Sonny for all but scolds,
wasn’t telling

and you’d have
more luck convincing
some chicken Colonel

to part
with the nuclear codes
than in persuading

his old friends
to let you in
on the secret.

A shrug
and a wink
was the most they would offer.

Hey,
we had theories—
perhaps

some relic
of a wild
and lurid past—

though dad
was the kindest man
I ever knew.

Buddha—
watching a crop
of neophytes

search for enlightenment
could not have
been more pleased

than dad
as we tried to puzzle
it out.

Once, just before he passed,
dad and I took
a gentle stroll

around the neighborhood
and he pointed
to a stranger and said

there is
a whole life
we cannot imagine.

But I didn’t
make
the connection.

Just last week
a friend used
sonder on a triple word

in Scrabble.
I lost the challenge,
but finally understood.

And, now the word,
like some fond, fair memory,
will never leave me.

Quotidian

For fifty years, we lived

at the bend in Spring Creek

where the stream turns

back on itself,

in a shingled Cape Cod

too small for the family

and dreadfully cold.

The creek’s ceaseless song

captained our seasons—

the slow murmur

of half-frozen water

holding tenuously to life

or the great green rush

of an early thaw.

Each spring we bailed

the basement

trying to keep our poor boat afloat—

fearing any minute

we might have to swim for it.

How our children learned

to hate that sodden season.

They are grown now

and scattered here and there

like the spray of water on rock.

It seems forever since a visit.

The oldest, Jillie, tells me

it took years to get the creek

out of her head.

I drove past the old place today—

much of the roof is collapsed and jagged.

I like to watch the fly fisherman

pluck rainbows from their hidden holes,

with a grace beyond my understanding.

And then, at sunset,

the creek and I head home.