Cognitive Therapy

.

You say one thing, the therapist another.
Shared secrets from a sofa, clock ticking.

You tell only what your heart knows.
Your being becomes a childhood --
everything you are.

Out On the Reach

.

Out on the reach that binds
the earth to sky to sea,

there is a green beacon,
searching out the drunken ship.

Empty vessel brightens,
lessens, torches and speaks --

giving light as the moon spills
tunnels of water, wave over wave,

spray taking spray.
White foam, blue foam passages

cleanse, wash, and whistle
the pulled-back beach

like chattering salt-bones.
Age reaps the calloused rock;

a chitonous shell drinks the sea
from the breath of the sea.


First published in Convergence Journal.

Iraqi Children

.

Listen, ear to pillow, hear them weep.
Say something so the children can sleep.

Board the windows, the noise of a jeep.
Say something so the children can sleep.

Survival is nothing, play is a leap.
Say something so the children can sleep.

No mother to read to them, soul to keep.
Say something so the children can sleep.


Published in Poets Against War online.

Magnolia Blossom

.

You read to your child, poems,
picture books, the way the scent
of a magnolia blossom fills the room.
Midnight the fountain is alight,
swans curl around the water.
The long neck of the mother
tells stories to her cygnets --
each page a drop, each book a pond.
Your hand around her hand,
her head upon your chest,
a life outside your lives never exists.
There is no other imagined place.


Published in Out On The Reach.

Conquistador

.

Rock of water, bone and cockle,
though sallow-cheeked and dappled,
your bow still stands in sand and sea.

Here lies your final anchor
your keel left creaking in the wind
Chrome and slip-stripped,
your turquoise sulking hull echo
the love-and-hate cries of your captain.

Dank and splintered,
teak planks form a fallow deck -
your mast a withering tree.

Fish wrought nets and brine bleached lines
tell of your faena with the sea.

You reflect the water,
her frayed nap upon your breath,
each wave painting
your brackish body.

In mustard sky you look stranded
and sunken.
Even still, you sink deeper, deeper.


Published in Harvard Scriptorium.