When he won his wings

The air force took his photograph

His hair evenly dark

Against the pale background

The pose catching the slow and easy smile

His sister knew so well,

His lips still soft with youth

And the promise of tomorrow

His eyes shining

Like wingtips touched by the sun.

He was so proud

He had won his dream.

Was it a year or a little more

Before the next photo came?

The camera recording

His promotion to captain.

Another proud moment.

Yet his sister cried when it arrived

For his hair was brushed with gray.

His lips so straight and tightly held,

His eyes dark shadows

That carried no memory

Of joyful, quick laughter.

Two photographs side by side

A war in between

Two photographs side by side

Beside them where they sat

His sister’s broken heart

#cameraday

Wind whistles through bone

The flute of the long dead

Music from another time

When lost people danced here

Beside hearths now buried

Beneath the desert sand

I imagine I hear their voices

Their songs circling

Within my head

Melting my staid posture

I sway as if blown

By the whistling wind

But in truth, I dance

In this ancient space

#globalwindday

The house where he slept is gone—

A barren lot, now, in the dawn.

So where is he,

The child whose memory is haunting me?

With his skin, like a turnip left too long

Out of ground in the sun,

The last of twenty-five, born without a song,

Without a place to run,

The hunger shrieked from his eyes,

Despair in his sighs,

In hand-me-downs that never fit,

Never still, ever moving, he would sit.

His fingers nibbled up our treasures

For heroin, pills and acid cures

For brothers, uncles-who-weren’t, and mayhap fathers

Who spilled their deaths into the morning papers.

I required him day after day to stay

Till all his stolen prizes on the desktop lay

And day by day his take grew less and less

As though only stolen to confess.

One day escaping when I forgot the game,

He returned, though I did not call his name,

Offering two paper clips and a rubber band:

All of that day’s contraband.

A little praise, a little gentle care

I could easily spare

For hungry eyes and a true smile

That lost for once its former guile.

The house where he slept is gone–

A barren lot, now, in the dawn.

So where is he

The child of hungry eyes,

Child refugee

With hungry eyes?

#worldinternationalchildrensday

It was hard to hate cousin Carl.

There was no evil in the man.

He never held any job for long;

Money slipped through his fingers

Like rain water down a grate—

Washing so many false hopes to the sea.

He was like a sweet dog

Who could not be trained:

A rambunctious, eager golden retriever—

Ever willing to play, to show affection

But never able to obey rules

For more than a second or two;

And never recognizing what was bad

Or harmful, until too late;

And then quickly forgetting.

It is not easy to live each day

With such a man,

But he is no easier to hate

Than a loving, vulnerable

Over-eager dog.

#UnitedNationsInternationaldayoflivingtogetherinpeace

Drenched in the liquid

Of your voiced poetry

I am transported

Battling in a waterfall

Of mellifluous words

Transformed

I am become Undine

Paddling playfully

Atop curl of wave as the melody crests.

Flirting with caresses

While the words

Pool

And slide away

As the poetry like a river

Claims the hills as a right of way.

I am Undine

Swimming deep

Where light is unknown

Where ears are more precious

Than eyes ever were,

With words

As my only guide

Drenched in the liquid

Of your voiced poetry

I am become Undine

Adrift in a dream

Where the words and I are one.

#greatpoetryreading