They went to the same schools,
Lived in the same neighbourhoods,
From the same small towns
In la provincia di Palermo.
Often they were distant relations
And cumpari from the old country.
My mother would say
“Jimmy Q was such a nice man,”
When the Feds said different,
And my grandfather
Would hug someone called Black Bill.
My father treated them respectfully
And they reciprocated.
They respect a respectful person
Because it shows indifference
To their business practices.
And now, with time, I’ve learned,
That guilty by association
You keep your mouth shut,
Wait until all of them are in the ground
And write poems about them
Like legends of their time.

When I was a kid,
We drove past
One of those endless Michigan cemeteries,
And my uncle caught me staring,
Maybe with more fear
In my face than necessary.

In his gravelly, wiseguy voice, he said,
“It’s not the dead you need to fear,
It’s the living.”

After that,
I never feared the dead,
And I never trusted the living again,
Especially him.

The older guys knew what to do:
dig a deep bed
and bury the coals under sand.
A survival tactic
they’d learned somewhere.

On that freezing night by the lake,
no one talked much,
just the crackle of cooling embers
and the weight of breath in the cold air.

I remember the heat on my back,
like the sun was buried under me
and our blankets were made of myriad stars.
We survived till morning
and followed the frost to the tracks.

may depress,
but I see it as the tree of winter
shedding its last leaves.

If it’s cold,
it’s only because winter
has paused over us,
resting without a coat.

If it’s grey,
it’s only because winter
hasn’t slept in days—
his face gone ashen.

Intellectually,
I’m indifferent to vicissitudes,
but my body feels the changes—
my body is the weak point.

I compensate—
growing leaves and poems
on my limbs,
that the spirit might carry
into Spring
what the body can’t.

Bread flour on the table
on my hands
over my mother’s apron

She’s dab some dough on my nose
and we’d both laugh

When she shook the flour
from her apron
an angel hovered in the air

When the loaves
went into the oven
it was like mother heat
and warmth
shaping the dough

That first taste
was the bread of life
the last taste
will be the bread of life

Why do I love Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise so much?
What has happened to me,
Overnight I’ve become an old man who weeps
For a song without words.
Is it because I’ve known the past,
Or because I know the future—
And that is a bitter knowledge to possess,
To know we will murder each other again,
And that nothing changes
Across landscapes of madness.
Another Vocalise will have to be written,
And another me will have to suffer
The sadness of knowing,
Of hating who we are,
And of what we’re capable—
After all, there’s something tragic about music
If it exists to heal the wounds
That we ourselves inflict.

A house finch on a juneberry tree
Feeding
On the fruit
That has yet to be

for Brigitte

Give thanks for her hands,
For the years they’ve woven,
For the soft touch, the steady grip,
That’s held you through the storms.

Give thanks for the quiet nights,
For the way she rests beside you,
Not needing words to say everything,
In the silence, she speaks.

Give thanks for her eyes,
For their spark, their warmth—
A mirror to your own heart,
In their depths, you’ve found your home.

Give thanks today,
Tomorrow,
And every breath between,
For she is the song that calls you home
And the silence that lets you listen.

Two blue jays land without a sound
then—
a hawk

light
and shadow
tear across the grass

the jays lift
and the chase
disappears
like it was never there

A day of such absolute stillness
Belongs to its own mausoleum.
It’s probably been dead for years
Like the power of any potentate.

Scanning the trees and the ground
It’s just like Keats might have said,
Scarcely has the very smallest leaf
Moved from where it sometime fell.

It’s a day to sit still and be grateful,
A day for thought and restful eremition,
Like a cancer in remission,
The spirit, at rest, beside its flesh.