One summer family fishing trips began, with my father, my mother, me.

I liked the walks involved, often down some overgrown dirt road

That ended with a view of the river and a dock.

My parents had the usual gear of poles, wiggling things for bait,

Bad snacks, and beer, all things I would not touch.

I carried my own, being a couple of books, pen and paper, sunflower seeds,

And a thermos of hot tea.

They’d settle down to nosh, drink, and the usual trash talk, all given requirements for catching a fish,

While I’d find an appropriate tree, climb it, open a book and read.

Sometimes I’d ponder my own hypocrisy and wonder at its nature

Which was that I refused to kill worms to catch the fish,

Often protested the act of fishing itself on the spot ( to the point of monotony I was told),

But once home and presented with dinner would still eat the catch.

The time I tried to follow the logical end of my principles,

I found myself given an empty plate at every meal, for my mother had her own set of rules.

Stubbornness, even that of a small mulish child determined to be right, eventually succumbs to hunger.

I knew what I would find,

yet I returned again and again.

It wasn’t that I thought

that your cold eyes would thaw

that your stony visage would soften,

rather, my misguided belief that I could learn

to warm myself before your frozen disdain

to make a home within your rocky disregard.

my fault, my grievous fault,

but I had not yet read the tragedians

to understand how deadly a mother can be.

I found comfort in the Oresteia.

He sat on my stoop, slightly drunk as usual, with his head against my door.

He swayed a bit as I helped him inside and asked me for a drink.

I gave him water, fed him a meal, and listened like I always did.

He told me the stories he could not escape,

The stories that drove him to walk the night,

The stories that put him there with his gun.

The war, some covert machination for unknown gain,

Where he killed for reasons he was never told,

Continued to claim him as a casualty.

He did not kill himself that night,

Though he fired one shot in his liquored haze.

Perhaps he knew it did not matter,

Because he had not returned alive at all.

No war is just, for any cause, if this is what results.

I hold the brass casing in my hand and mourn.

It was almost dark, and I was alone.

The moon waited to rise, sunken in the swampy waters just beyond.

It would be bigger than the sun, orange-red,

But send no fiery heat to blister the tarmac.

I wanted to stop on the edge of the gravel road,

To watch this happen, but had no time.

My skin throbbed as I walked, and I wondered

What would happen if I raised my head in supplication.

Would the night heal what the day had wounded?

I wanted to stop but had no time.

I still remember the crunch and slide of the gravel underneath my feet,

The whirr and click of crickets, and the weight of the damp dusk

As it fell, far too heavy and far too fast, upon my hurrying back.

Eight years old, alone.

I wanted to stop but had no time.

cold dropped my wandering mind

immediately into the heat of body’s center,

wind slammed my absent attention

into the here and now of walking,

clouds forecast my changed trajectory into a quieter day.

I cannot call you as before,

to register this dramatic landscape.

frozen tears are no different than ice;

sorrow chills the heart in mid-beat.

another death, and snow is falling.

another day, and you are gone beyond.

It was more the fact of me than my work,

I think, that caught their attention.

They came expecting art, not to find the artist.

I appeared at first an acceptable guide, until I started talking:

Explaining the premise of the show,

The collaborations between intelligence human and non,

And offering a few baffling metaphysical concepts.

I asked startling questions, though it appeared

That to these young people any questions were so,

As I sensed they came from a school

That encouraged smiling silence, not vocal curiosity.

The young women looked interested; the young men appalled,

Both understandably so.

For the first, I could be a glimpse of an alternative future;

The latter might find me a definite threat,

As I proudly stalked unafraid through the halls.

I move close enough to share her breath,

Gently stroke her face, and listen.

Her sleep restless, she stirs in pain,

Her breathing labored, ragged,

A harsher sound than before.

Now it’s joined by a thin rhythmic whistle,

That I dread yet keenly hope to hear:

Though it be the herald of death’s eventual arrive,

As long as it remains, thus does she.