The Onion Phase

The Onion Phase


It’s not like an onion, there’s nothing in the center,
It is like an onion, when cutting in, tears can come,
  Old ear-worms in the knots of a tangled mind,
  Soon are squirming to unwind,
Teasing a reaction, sometimes feel-good endorphins, 
  A natural high you can’t recreate tomorrow, 
Or as often, snotnose, tearful ghosts,
  Makyo in the Buddha Hall, absent of distractions

In this breath, out this breath,
  And again

I never wept for my Mother, even at her service,
Leaving, my Father looked to the clouds and burst,
  “She’s up there now …”
Brothers hugged and held him,
  I stood aloof, alone

I never cleaved to my High School girlfriend,
  My first kiss,
Whom I prommed and dry humped at parties,
Then I was immune from a lover’s remorse,
  When over terms we grew apart

I never changed my major from that hobby,
  I let my guidance counselor off too easily,
I avoided, un-acknowledging,
  This degree will lead to no career

Silent in my borrowed ash robe,
  I am sorrowful now,
Remember what they say of chopping onions?
“Don’t wipe your eyes, it only makes it worse,”
  With patience, the old fuses sparkler out

Sparrows spit in the bushes, framed in the open window,
  My humpback neighbor noses windfully,
As a drying wind blows through,
  In one ear, out the other,
    And again

Was it real? 
  Could it be there was no onion?
    Can I just sit with what comes next?

Rhymes with a Raw Red Nose

Rhymes with a Raw Red Nose


I lift our Mr. Cat,
  Warm and soft,
Pliant as a favorite plush toy,
  I scratch him on the hips,
And out comes from the lips
  His pink tongue to lick upon my nose,
Should some day his rough barbs wear
  (I not minding his cat food breath)
Through the skin, to leave me open skeleton faced,
  Nose exposed nasal cartilage,
His affectionate and kindly grace
  I could never disparage

Yet, this is a behavior to ponder

Why, only when I scratch him there,
  Does he counter with such curious care?
Is it being since he’s gotten fat,
  He has given rear end hygiene pause?
Could it be he thinks I clean his butt
  That gives his reflex habit cause?

Murmurations

Murmurations


Walking, half a block before my bus stop,
  A woman, near my age,
Head crooked looking to night-hood,
  Where by I stopped and watched

  “What d’jou see?”
  “It’s that cloud, among the sky, swirling round?”

Above us swam a spinning mass, as much
  A scribble, a pen’s crossing out,
Rolling forward, tail erasing,
  A windless tornado, a black cotton candy,
  All spun in the dusk,
Its pixels a dense winged smoke,
  They were birds

“They’re Starlings,” I said, “European, introduced,
  They come from Europe, Mozart had one,
  The bird would sing back his recitations”

They squeaked a rusty magic high above us,
  Mass chattings, their cacophony of love,
  (or perhaps “Migrate, migrate, migrate,” it coming on Fall)
Some forward, teasing others nowhere,
  Those behind, trying to cut up the arc before them,
None arriving anywhere first,
  None remaining anywhere last

After a moment she walked on up the street,
  I turned on down to catch my bus home,
She did not dart back like the birds, teasing me,
  I did not cut up into the arc before her, courting wise,
I thought she was nice, I scribbled her out,
  I whistled a song she never heard

We each went home, I’ve not seen her again

Murmurations pas de deux,
  Love flies above on Starlings' wings

Myron

Myron

When Jerry Lewis died, I told Christine
  My favorite joke of his, was,
In an old film with Dean Martin, he told a girl
“My mother always called me Myron Myron,
  First she’d call ‘Myron,’ and if I didn’t come
  She’d call me again (yelling) MYRON!”

This was September, 2017,
I’d thought her clutch had failed in the autumn chills,
  Grey and rainy New England
Gets the patchwork remnants of
  America’s tropical hurricanes and storms

Until the day out the kitchen door
  There’s Cleo (I’ve wrote of Cleo)
And her nest that bore a little head,
  Black and white as Jerry in old movies,
She feeding him crop milk,
  He pecking at the lip behind her beak for more

A week on, she’d often be gone,
Wherever, gathering more formula for crop milk,
  He growing on the rim of the nest,
His head bent back to remove the sheaths
  On pinfeathers, like a plastic wrap,
Reaching out stiff wings,
  As if to catch a wind had not yet come,

Past the time migrating birds had flown,
  Leaving us only the wintering Jays and Cardinals,
Far too late for a fledgling in the brush,
  (Cleo’s first clutch fledged in June!)  
Yet now our mourning nest was empty, amid
  The rains of another named storm

Beside myself, I flew off on out the driveway,
  Seeking, whispering, then boldly not whispering,
To all the flailing brush and trees;
  Myron, Myron,
    MYRON!

Fish Guts

Fish Guts


As Cuttyhunk tourists we are cautious,
  Seaside townspeople watching us,
Seagulls watching us,
  “Why you watching us, Seagulls?”

Fish Guts

At the only store, she bought me this t-shirt,
We walk up to the old WWII bunker,
  Saw no U-Boats through our glass,
Walked back to town, the tide’s still out,
   Oh God, what’s that aroma? …

Fish Guts

Blue Stripe Fishing Tours ties up to the dock, all tanned
Wealthy family stepping out,
   Helped with the Surly Captain’s hand,
Next Popeye Skipper takes their catch,
   ‘Cause he’ll make every buck he can, … cleaning 

Fish Guts

Slap on a plywood board nailed to the dock rail,
He slides his knife into each belly,
  Pulls the white paunch sides so wide,
Scoops with his hand red fresh pink jelly,
  Next thing he’s throwing to the tide, … fresh 


Fish Guts

It dawns us how come it is everyone looks this way,
From everywhere at once they come,
  Descending from the sky,
More seagulls than you thought could be,
  Each squawking hearty seaside cries, … for

Fish Guts

Ropes of fish intestines wrap around their yellow beaks,
The Captain minces giblets,
  Then he tosses them in reach,
Of a hundred squabbling seagulls,
  Who now rule the dockside beach, … grab

Fish Guts

Our boat arrives, departure, now we’re on a queasy ride,
The catamaran we’re on takes
  Every wave from side to side,
When we get back to Oak Bluffs we’ve decided we will, we’ll
  Rather get ourselves a pizza, thoughts of fresh fish make us ill,  … bleh!

Fish Guts!

A Poem for Maureen

A Poem for Maureen


I had slept on the lower hall couch,
It raining so hard as to wash away the world
  As night summer thunders often do

Waking when the rain had stopped, all others in bed,
  It was up to my cabin in the woods I head,
Deep in the woods and up the hill
  Out the kitchen door, over the meadow path,
Where only dripping trees remained
   Of Nature’s past torrential wrath

Without a moon, without the stars,
  No flashlight in my hand,
I tread uphill with caution, touching toe
  First to find a rock or sand,
As I must keep upon the path,
  Within its trodden well walked band

Until I found that I was off,
  My foot before told me the ground fell off,
As I was on the edge of a crevasse,
  The depth of which I could not know,

So I stood,

No natural or manmade light,
  Only about me total night,
As if it was in space I stood,
  And not within a mountain wood

And I float,

Unsure even which way was up
As I was flying in a Bardo,
  A senseless place, not life nor death,
Where mindless fears, imagined demons,
  All walk and rule unnatural space

Out of my mind

For they cannot be real,
  Here in this place where I can’t feel
Except these rampant fears unkind
  That I brought here within my mind

Outside of time

For how long I stood there …
  All I was was unknowing,
All I was was unmeasurable
  Unstaked black distance from a death to new life,
The latter of which marked when for no reason,
  Maureen,
You flipped the switch on your cabin porch light

And I was reborn

Back in the world, dispelled of the night,
It’s said the mindful pick their mothers,
  Would I had a choice, I’d pick no other,
For your kindness brought me back to life,
  You made my world, you gave me sight

Plant Potatoes

Plant Potatoes


First you plant potatoes,
  Buried in a little hill,
Water as you ought’a,
  And you let ‘em grow until,
September come around,
  And now you dig ‘em out the ground

Eat the big’uns, put the lit’luns,
  In a sturdy paper bag,
Save ‘em in yer basement,
  or your cool garage until,
After frostime in the spring time,
  Bury in a little hill …

The Mourning Dove

The Mourning Dove


The brood doves’ consort is a Highland Piper,
A silhouette upon a peaked neighbors roof,
  Where he broods in grief

Too late had she returned to the nest,
Past the warmth of summer,
  Now into autumn’s cool,
Yet there she is, twigs up to her breast
On a nest upon the driveway lamp,
  An end of summer’s endurance test

How much longer can she guard a clutch
  Who’s chance of hatching isn’t much,
Or will she sit on them all fall
  Under the watching Piper’s pall

The Face Plant

The Face Plant


It seems a natural act,
  Sunflowers bow down to the ground
As their flower petals fall,
  They do so slowly, without sound


In Spring they grow straight upwards,
  Reaching high up as would trees,
There to make it easier for
  Summer’s humming birds and bees

I truly find sunflower scent
  Is pleasanter than most,
Their brown florets let aromas of
  Warm cinnamon on toast

Yet be careful of your nose
  There’s yellow pollen on bee knees,
Which if too heartily sniffed is surely
  Bound to make you sneeze

Then come the days when they will turn
  And ready for the fall,
Seeing heavy canes all bowing
  Is the saddest sight of all

And then they kip face over
  Lying abject on the dirt,
Until the day seed faces sprout,
  Sometime about next April first

Mermaid

Mermaid

I and a friend took a bus to the end
Of the island, where all the beautiful people come,
She too was on the bus, I didn’t know her then,
She too was with a friend, why would I care?
We walked down to the public beach,
Went on a way, far out of reach
Of parents with their kids, we let them be

Soon after we unfolded our beach chairs,
I turned and saw her sitting there,
Not uncomfortable, I was comfortable,
When came that Man moment we have at all ‘nude’ beaches,
I stood up and dropped our my shorts, thinking only
“How much lotion should I apply, and where?”
Though no one watched, I’d not coat it there

Under the July sun, glistening bodies all about,
She and her friend too sunbathed without tops,
I looked away, the gentleman,
… not my first day on the beach

Like a touch of cold water,
She chilled me from behind, asking;
  “Could you please take our picture?” offering her phone,
They walked back to the cliffs, stood arm in arm,
I framed them in the camera mode, they leaned in close,
A safety, plus my pulse too was clicking,
She thanked me for her phone, and I felt strongly
My friend and I needed a swim, in cold water,
A place where I could hide my pride
  … and safely be unseen

She and her friend came after too,
A few yards down, watching her I dreamed, as we,
Unknowing, naked children in our same sea bed,
Dove and jumped within Poseidon’s green waves,
Whose sea fig leaves only preserved our innocence,
Yet soon the cold sea did its job, cooling my blood,
I walked back to my beach chair, and watched

She climbed to sit upon a sea rock,
Her friend frolicking nymphlike in the froth before her,
She taking white sea spray upon her breasts,
White gouts of foam ran down her laughing face,
I had to put my shorts on

Late came time to return for the bus,
She with her friend, dressed again as we,
Leading to where we would need part,
At their bus stop, miles before we came to ours

Wanderlust,
We have returned to that beach since,
She’s not been back, not one footprint