Alarms

Ever before a night owl – but as a dad, no longer able to sustain the night – I remade my circadian clock for poetry and art. I craved the quiet dark of morning and found the smallest nook of predawn. But in a house of teachers and school age children, even morning silence is brief, and frequently broken by alarms. An escalating synthesizer followed by a sleep-filled exasperated sigh, and the clatter of a hand finding a phone in the dark to press snooze. The staccato squawk of a clock radio and clack of another hand slapping it off. Alarms to wake, to wake again, to wake again and shower, to move from the steam filled bathroom to dress, to the kitchen for tea or coffee, or to leave in time to stop for the same. When the last alarm has ended, the last independent individual gone, and the house again settles; when there is only the sound of a pen on paper and the smell of the cup of coffee going cold, our youngest child calls out for his mom.

The Scales

for husband and father

art is infidelity

for poet and painter

homelessness looms

but ghosts always

absent the other half

laughter in the living room

some sweet joke to later go

over my head

a flood of guilt

washes away the will the words

and saturates the paint

absence or the unheeded call

always weighing

which i am willing to regret

Patriarch

it’s fair to say my father dead over 

a year now scandalized my mother by

being unfaithful throughout their marriage

before having the gall to fall and die

after months in a convalescent home

though at least he lived long enough to make

apologies weeping in a rusted

wheelchair holding her hand his own shaking

after his ashes were stashed in the urn

she saw his cell phone and took back mercy