First Coffee

‘Two dark coffees with cream please’, I ordered at Gelato Vero coffeehouse
after staggering in that chilly early morning in mid-December many years ago.


My daughter born just hours before in the hospital up the hill. She’s so pink
and luminous underneath that little longshoreman’s knit cap and I can’t help


but smile thinking of her birth as I write this down now. I recall the young
barista pouring our coffees, one for me the other for my wife whom I left


dozing, recovering, after the birth and three or four days of sharp back pain,
that hard labor a man can never know. She introduced herself as ‘Helen’


while she poured the coffees—this gave me goosebumps then – Helen my
three hour old daughter Keighty’s middle name and my great Aunt Helen


her maverick, mischief making, story-telling, psychic namesake who loved
to feed the black crows table scraps after dinner on her Wisconsin farm


and to spin outlandish yarns about the too earnest Lutheran minister and
his lofty sermons down in the village church.


Oh my dear daughter, Keighty Helen, can you see how I glow as my grin
devours the distance between us these two plus decades later, now that we’ve


come full circle, and sit here in the morning light, together contentedly, quietly
familiar, sharing these two round and true, steaming cups of such dark rich coffee.

SUNDAY

On this Sunday morning

may you bask in the warm

comforting arms of life,

 

enfolded thus, you are

emboldened in speech

and in your reach,

 

out beyond the crumbling

stuccoed walls and two

storied suburban homes

 

to where the grand lake

lies blue, fertile and fresh,

where silver geckos scurry

 

and laze on smooth boulders

and fish swim this fall day

away in secret peccadillos,

 

while above, fishermen languish

underneath a wide cerulean sky,

 

sit so quietly here, they could

not care less about a catch,

 

they know like the fish

and the lizards

and these clouds

 

drifting free in such

spaciousness

 

where they want to

be caught.

The Map is Not the Territory, Nor the Moon the Marriage

Be leary of theory,
Love dogs, not dogma.

Trust the quiescent
Radiant moon
And the way

Its luminous crescent
Shimmers alive

The awakening stream
Of your life.

(And if fortune has deemed
that you have one, shine all
your warm love with such

joy and much play
onto the flesh
and soul

of your one
and only,
your most
lovely,
good
wife.)

on the occasion of the full moon in Pisces on my mother's birthday

La Luna Lingers,

Watches Over
All Like A She-

Wolf With Her
Cubs Or A White

Rose Soon To
Bloom.