Poetry 365: Morning in Beacon Hill

The fog fills the street
level windows and lobbies
of the brownstone homes.

Poetry 365: Crisp

A single leaf floats,
yellow down to the blacktop:
a diver in air.

Poetry 365: Last Hour Before the Shift

An extra hour to contemplate
the reflectors and mile markers.
An extra hour to find the station
with the DJ who sounds just like
first love and restlessness.
An extra hour to lose in spring.

Poetry 365: No Hay Titulo

Strutting around with an emerald hooded pigeon,
locking the hands of biology and religion.
Capital letters standing tall on the blackboard
wearing a leather quiver and a silver scabbard.
Who knew just how much black sand we should carry?
This heart is the one to lift, the old one: the one to bury.

Poetry 365: Halloween

The pigtailed girls from town
have woven mermaid tails
from dried palm fronds,
the color of old dollars.

The boys from the country
paint their faces black with mud
and decide that they will be night
or smoke from a brush fire.

Poetry 365: Stery

One of these cold nights
will find you with a handful
of lavender hearts.

Poetry 365: Floating Floating

If you look closely at my hands
at rest, you will always see
the are slightly cupped, as if
to carry imaginary water
to quench a very real thirst.

If you look quickly out the window
and over the guard rails, you will
see in the distance horses, at rest
amid the patchy grass and palmettos
wishing they were running, like you.

If you look now, there is nothing here.

Poetry 365: The Girl With Short Knives

waits for the signal,
fastening the black ribbon
that encircles our waists,
only to cut us loose,
falling to the muddy ground.

Goodbye, Roxy

Roxy Lee Riley
1985-2006
Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship

You spent 21 years with Jen and four with me. It's remarkable that I even got to know you. On the bags for senior cat food, it says 7 and up. You were like three of those senior cats put together. I know you thought of me as the new guy, the guy who took your spot on the bed. But you loved me anyway. Thanks for that.

You were my first real pet. I'll never forget you moving in with me a week ahead of Jen moving to Boston. I was so nervous that I'd screw you up and Jen would never forgive me. So you got overfed and spoiled that week. We really bonded then, watched TV and played with strips of newspaper on the floor. It felt like freshman year in the dorms. Somehow, you even cured me of my allergy to cats that week.

I will remember you best in that apartment on Beacon Street, napping in the sun patches by the dining table and climbing into the bathtub and meowing for us to turn on the water for you to drink. I know that you're out there somewhere in a bathtub in the sun. I miss you. I love you.

Poetry 365: Tame

There is stillness
while you are floating/napping.
This is what Zen is.

Poetry 365: First Car

Mortality never occurs to you,
until that first hard stop,
that first slow motion perception
of the silver LeSabre
and the old woman driving it,
who is looking for her station
on the AM dial instead of the road.
This is when the shadows.
This is when the shadows.

Poetry 365: Untitled

It isn't the wind
that crawls to the door, breathing
the last of the air.

Poetry 365: Merchant Marine

Christ, it is not a day to be working the beach.
The ocean might just vanish into steam by suppertime.
The days are as wide across as Ohio,
and the palms provide only thin, sparse shade.

I sell drinks to the tourists and redeem the empties
when they finish for recycling. I wonder if
they become cans again, or if they dream
of being resurrected as nails in a country manor.

Sometimes, I rest on the cooler and watch
my customers hammer down King's Lager
forgetting about the roses and the thorns
in their yards that don't miss them.

The sun is the engine that drives the day
and we are nearly back at home.

Poetry 365: Recognition in Night

Splash! The stillness now
shattered by a lone green frog,
who knows who you are.

Poetry 365: The Water's Running at 6AM

This mirror shows me
what my grandfather
must have looked like
in 1939, shaving
5200 miles away
from my infant father.

Poetry 365: Falling Falling

All the windows, closed.
All the curtains are drawn shut.
Night comes earlier.

Boston Half Marathon 2006

Boston Half Marathon 2006, originally uploaded by nervda.

2:05:53. Much faster than I had expected. I ran a faster back half than front. I did meet my usual goal of beating the winner's time multiplied by two.

Poetry 365: October

Autumn is blazing back
from old memories.
The shadow of a buck
runs under the rail bridge,
and we are still sleeping.

Race Day Approaches

This Sunday, I will be running the Boston Half Marathon for the fourth consecutive time. It's one of my favorite races. The distance is challenging, but not terrifying. Training for a marathon really takes a mental, emotional and physical toll on you. Training for a half marathon, paradoxically, is way less than half as torturous.

I have absolutely no idea how I will do. All of my long runs (except for one) have been while pushing the J-Dawg and his 35 pound jogging stroller. My weekday runs have come at the office, where I've just been running out 15 minutes and then back. I don't know how much ground I am covering, as I'm running in the woods between an office park and a highway.

It's a spur of the Bay Circuit Trail. You feel like wildlife when you can't see pavement, cars or buildings when you're on a run. You have to take short zig zag steps when coming down the trail on hills to keep from falling. You take a hard right after the downhill and you feel like the General Lee accelerating out of a turn on a dusty Georgia road.

OK. Gotta go run now.

Poetry 365: Untitled

checkpoints
conveyor belts
and x-rays
snow blowing up
past the jetways
at this rate
i'll be sleeping
at terminal gates
until tuesday
i can see
my luggage
sitting on the runway
shivering shivering
not much left
on the batt

Poetry 365: The Second Article

That's how we chose him:
because he cut a more regal air,
asleep in his boots.

Poetry 365: I-90

The guard rail seems to sing
from the vibrations of the Mavericks,
Mustangs, Malibus, Metros and Matrices.

Poetry 365: 30 Seconds Worth of Dirt

We hide in the palmetto,
like we did when we were children
careful not to move,
as the clatter always gives us away.