StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XLV

When I was twenty I would wonder
"How will I know when I fall in love?"
Decades later, after I sobered down,
The question is moot: I know the answer
And firmly understand the difference between
A hot animal rush and the human pair bond
That extends through all our ages into the grave.

The morning after the snowfall,
The morning after the freeze,
The trees are still well leafed
Against a bright blue chill sky.

Autumn has won for the moment,
Turned back the fierce winter gods
For still another week, another month,
Before surrendering to the inevitable.

A woman in a hijab scarf
Rides by on a ten speed bike,
A man walking a Zweizund shepherd
Checks out a hydrant on the sidewalk,
A pack of beagles behind a backyard fence
Alerts the neighborhood with their barking,
I open our car door in front of our house,
Sit in the passenger seat, waiting for Sharon
While the Korean couple continues their outdoor arguments
And the West African men across the street
Gather around the stoop to discuss their manly interests:
A neighborhood slowly, inevitably changes,
Even a redneck one set a few blocks near
A pre-Civil War slave auction site.

This dull aching fugue struggles for control,
Draining me of will and creative desire;
I sit upright, pen in hand,
Kick-starting my brain with poetry and coffee:
The outcome is indeterminate,
As is the quality of the poetry. I lie back down,
Watch crime scene procedurals on cable t.v.,
Hoping that time will resolve what I cannot.

If I could have been a girl singer
Fronting a rock and roll band,
If I could have sung then like I can sing now,
I might have dropped everything to be
A good singer-songwriter instead of a great poet.
The set-up was all wrong and the timing was worse,
I could no more have been a rock and roll star then
Than I could have played centerfield
For the San Francisco Giants,
There were psychologies to be worked out,
Physical limitations to overcome,
Sicilian expectations of what a first born must do,
But if I could chose one road instead of college,
I would have sung rock and rhythm and blues
-- Assuming, of course, that baseball was out --
Done my best to avoid acid and the opiates,
Figured out a way to write my poetry on the side,
And find Sharon out there somewhere in America,
All the while making time enough for love.

Ultimately, we are all dead women,
Some in childbirth, some in old age,
Some at the hands of men.

We cannot change our fate
Anymore than we can change our men;
The best we can ever do is choose wisely
And hope there are no surprises.

But to change our end,
That is beyond a woman's command,
Or any man's, for that matter.

Beneath the Flesh


Beneath the flesh all are skull
Surrounding gray matter and some teeth,
Some brains are smarter, some are not,
Some are faster than the rest;
All are trapped within our bodies
Until ashes all return.