27 Sunday Jul 2025
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Children, Dreams, Gratitude, Healing, Hope, Life, Love, Marriage, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Strength, Survival, Tuscan, Unity
a peaceful night
a Tuscan dream
of deep red wine
and beautiful cuisine
we danced below
the mellow moon
its light, approval,
of our outside room—
the love, the happiness
of family ties, in that moment
altered
from our saddened lives
20 Tuesday Jun 2023
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Children, Colton, Daughter, Divorce, Family, Fathers, Leaving, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Son
Loss after loss,
They seem seamless:
First you, then her, then him.
Or has time contracted,
Months, minutes;
Years, minutes.
How do I make them years again?
How do I release loss,
Accept it as part of the beauty
Of being alive and lost, too?
This last goodbye, ahhh–
Always out of my control.
Then, the wishing regrets.
They make me cry.
Generations, they never stop
Making their awful mistakes.
I deserve happiness, they say–
But do they ever find it?
It rained today, and it was cold, too.
June 20th. It has been eleven days,
Or eleven minutes, I forget.
01 Wednesday Mar 2023
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Addiction, Children, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Family, Fear, Loss, Love, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, song, Song of Sorrow and Joy, Souls
Ashes to ashes
She wrote with a brush,
A tattoo needle,
And dust to dust.
From this life to that
We pass,
We’re crushed,
Ashes to ashes,
And dust to dust
—
Heart to heart,
When we were young,
Living to music,
Song to song,
Love to love,
Our mutual need,
To cling together
And never leave.
—
Chorus:
Cuz we’re ashes to to ashes,
And dust to dust,
From this life to that
We pass, we’re crushed,
We burn, we rage,
We laugh, we trust,
Then we’re ashes to ashes,
And dust to dust.
—-
The limits of us
Were all too near;
The fire it burned,
But the end was clear.
The mistakes I made
Still bring me to tears:
The words unsaid,
And the realized fears—
—
Chorus:
Cuz we’re ashes to to ashes
And dust to dust,
From this life to that
We pass, we’re crushed,
We burn, we rage,
We laugh, we trust,
Then we’re ashes to ashes,
And dust to dust.
—
The needle it tore,
It bled, it ripped;
But the dye was cast,
And the words inscrib’d,
And my arm it burned
With the words I asked:
The dye, the needle,
All, mixed with his ash.
—
Chorus:
Yes, we’re ashes to to ashes,
And dust to dust,
From this life to that,
We pass, we’re crushed,
We burn, we rage,
We laugh, we trust,
Then we’re ashes to ashes,
And dust to dust.
15 Sunday May 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Children, Division, Divorce, Family, Hate, Healing, Life, Longing, Loss, Love, Love Poems, Marriage, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Self, Souls, Women's Poems, Yearning
The push, and pull, of memory,
When you left me I got sadness, despair,
When I left you, I got amnesia.
Be careful what you forget,
Memories, hostage to one another,
Shoved into the abyss, together they go,
What was beautiful, too,
The joy of holding his babies at my breasts,
The sound of love in first words;
Hope, like a childhood dream,
You’re embarrassed you believed.
And now, no plumbing the hole
With dirty hands, arms not long enough
To reach what was so easily given away;
(The hurt was not traded for living,
As I’d hoped,) no, I want them all back,
Though they bring you, with the sadness, too.
03 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Aging, Beauty, Belief, Children, Death, Dying, Eternity, Family, Gratitude, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits
In the end, we don’t know
How the end will come,
Peaceful, as we sleep,
Or, under the thumb
Of morphine. Memories,
Like flotsam, from the depths
Of our once bright existence,
Form a tunnel toward our exit,
Each day, one step closer,
Almost touching what was lost:
mother, child, father.
26 Wednesday Jan 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Broken, Children, Division, Divorce, Family, Forgiveness, Life, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Snake River
I’d be lying, if I said I didn’t know,
Years of turmoil, like a river,
With a dangerous undertow.
Like swimmers, outside their boat,
Unable to swim, thrown against rocks.
We were young, and bound together
By our children. Then, the talk:
You don’t love me, he said,
And, rather than saying it wasn’t true,
I asked, what does love have to do
With being married? We have kids.
We were pulled over, under a bridge,
Which spans the mighty Snake River.
We were both wrong, but does it matter?
Self-fulling, breakup chatter–
Prelude to the email I would find–
Betrayal, is not a kind way to end.
Twenty years later, still not friends,
Yet, we are friendly in our pain.
The sting of loss, defines a sting,
And taints our world, a broken thing.
11 Saturday Dec 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Children, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Forgiveness, Grace, Life, Longing, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Song of Sorrow and Joy, Soul, Souls, Spirit
III
And now, I pause
at the feet of your memory:
Your laughter,
before there was nothing
To laugh about,
Your strength,
Your fatal optimism in your strength.
I’ve learned,
Being a rock, a steady hand
Wasn’t always conducive
To being a full man.
And there is the regret,
(Mine, not yours),
But it’s too late for regrets.
We are who we are,
And so little escapes that reality;
What forms us,
Forms all others, formed me.
Sometimes, we are left to weep
at what could have been:
We could have called,
We could have written,
We could have cherished,
The moments we came
Wanting to be cherished.
I misspoke,
When I said imperfections fade away–
They don’t,
But there is no anger,
Only a dull futility:
The reality that is, versus
What we hoped it would be.
24 Saturday Apr 2021
Tags
Children, Courage, Death, Family, Forgiveness, Generations, Hope, Life, Love, Marriage, Mothers, New Collection, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Strength, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning
It’s a wonder I’m here, progeny of lost souls,
orphans, abandoned wives, poverty & places
so uninhabitable, unsustainable—
Yet, I’m here, and the generations beyond me
refuse to wither, too.
When the earth begins to close,
there’s always just enough left
to sustain us. One small patch of grass,
free of weeds, or drought,
and just enough blue sky and sun.
We find that place, and stay long enough
to drag another survivor on.
24 Monday Jun 2019
Tags
Childhood, Children, Divorce, Forgiveness, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, Surviving, Trauma, Violence
What is the opposite
of the violence
you witnessed,
hostages to our pain,
too young to know
what normal should be?
But tonight,
all three grown,
and at my side,
the peace
of survivors who love
and forgive–
because what else is there
except to love
and forgive.
12 Friday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birth, Brook, Children, Courage, Fear of Death, First Born, Freedom, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Mothers, New Soul, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Son, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Strength, Yearning
Some, come into the world as old souls,
like they’ve been here a hundred times,
a bit weary, wise, or jaded, made cautious
by pain & an understanding of human hearts.
But not my son, whose eyes saw the earth
as if he, and it, were just created.
Yes, from first breath he was a wanderer,
like his father in his lust for the world,
possibilities stretched out before him,
no person stranger, no place strange,
a modern day viking making his way
across an infinite, angry sea, with no map.
Unless, music is a map. Song after song,
his heart in waves of hard-plucked strings.
He sang loud, and I wondered how
he could pour himself out in front of crowds.
I see him, even now, upon the ocean,
his wooden ship, the waves, the sails.
08 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
And there you lay,
on the hospital bed,
your long, liquid self,
blond tendrils–
even in dying
you were beautiful.
And your baby girl,
left behind,
forever suspended
in the golden
syrup of your soul
poured out—
frozen,
fossilized.
09 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Azaleas, Children, Death, Flowers, hydrangeas, Life, Lilies, Love, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Winter, Winter poem
Winter returned, unbroken,
and I bought azaleas, hydrangeas
and stems of lilies
to stand against white windows.
How like memories,
these flowers in winter:
smiles, laughter, love,
eyes, cheeks, toes, and fingers.
Mama, mama, mama,
I hear them calling,
as I cut their stems.
08 Tuesday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Forgive me for wishing
life was more like a fairytale,
a place where once upon a time
we all struggled, our hearts
torn apart, put together again,
as we desperately journeyed
toward our happiest moments.
When we finally reached them,
and got a taste of what we knew
was out there for a few rare lucky souls,
some benevolent hand would write,
they lived happily ever after:
On my son’s twenty-ninth birthday,
He spun the big wheel at Fast Eddies,
it tink-tink-tinked past the free beer,
five dollars, and hamburgers,
to stop at the fifty dollar jackpot.
He danced with his hands in the air,
he smiled, that rare smile,
his lover kissed his cheek.
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