Privileges

I start the day by eating toast 

with avocado instead of egg 

to begin a new ritual in my new 

moss green kitchen 

where I hang a gold and blue image

of Our lady of Guadalupe 

to save me from misfortune 

because I have always been superstitious 

and now grateful 

that I don’t live anywhere near

Palestine, Ohio 

where a homeowner with a bad cough 

took a microphone and told the

CEO of Norfolk Southern 

that his company stinks. 

I too have a right to feel wounded 

by miseries bursting from pipes 

and potholes and cracked sidewalks 

across my state.

 

Inside me a loud cry

will not cease 

for I know there

is no savior, no path away

from slumped bodies tossed  

under feeways by big owners.

of everything.

The smoke of small fires drifts out 

from the underpasses 

so we cannot forget 

who sleeps there. 

But I have avocados, sonnets, 

leaves from Lake Chabot, a grandchild,

a plane ticket. 

I can look but not get

away. 

Meteorology

I only need to hear 

the first three notes 

in his voice to know 

he speaks the truth about his homework

so I say, Ok Have another 

of whatever he is asking for.  

My little man hasn’t figured out 

how well I know him.  

He doesn’t realize his First Grade heart beats 

inside a glass cage for all to see.  

He tells me, Miss Robbins says 

she has eyes 

in the back of her head 

but I think she’s just kidding, don’t you?

I am the meteorologist of his moods. 

I know what he’ll say and what he’ll do 

until the day a shadow darkens his upper lip. 

That’s when he changes passwords 

on all his devices. 

And when the How would I know? answer 

shoots down my every question.  

Warnings, slow, like a truck beeping in reverse. 

And then one night the roof blows open. 

A spray of cologne announces 

a blunt has just been lit.  

And the whispers of a girl wake me

in the middle of the night. 

Each dawn pulls him further from 

the glass cage into a steel vault

and me wondering, must I love

him harder or with more ease?

The answer, like an engine 
in a rusty old car, 

turns and turns but never catches.

Cicadas

 When facebook flashes pictures of him 

I posted 10 years ago, or 7, or even only 4,

an ache moves through me.  

My eyes fix on the picture, enlarge it 

with my thumb and finger for a closer look 

at this adorable being I lost. 

No he is not dead.  

Grown. But isn’t that a death?

The child body is shed. 

The caterpillar is no more. 

It makes me a little weak to see 

him again. That funny expression that 

amused us all.  

The musings sung to me—

so in love we were! 

A child grows noiselessly, 

in smoke as if by a spell—

all in one night pulled 

into the mystery. 

The force is in them, 

stirring them up, making them tall & hairy 

& hooded--making them say mean things 

and then apologize.

 I wish babies would hatch 

—not one beauty at a time —

but like cicadas—by the millions.

Not just one grinning, toothless, 

skipping boy-- but millions 

exactly like him 

all springing from the earth

every few years, 

high singing, buzzing.

The school reports

The school reports my teen man 

missing again.  I wonder 

what am I supposed to do 

with this new bullet of hurt? 

Peace with him now as brief 

as a traffic stop before 

the next bad news.  

Is there any use to sit 

on the edge of his bed to talk?   

Or to grab his stack of curls and pull 

him to the floor like my mother 

did to mine?

In the beginning, he never disobeyed 

or snarled or cursed.  

I thought it such a blessing 

but now I ask the thin air all around, 

was that a clue I missed--

some kind of secret suffering? 

Who knows why his future 

shows up like this—the days 

of sweet behavior giving way to vaping 

and mating in the back seat.  

Surely that good-kid blood still 

flows through his veins. 

All that light of heaven he 

once shared freely 

he may share again—

tho less evenly, less often—coerced 

by the dictatorship of

life.