(Poem 2021)

To Make a Vest Follow This Chart

To make an afternoon 

follow the silver cloud.

To make a moon

Follow your torn arm chair.

To make a mood

Follow your hesitant breath.

To make a brilliant summer

Follow the frozen cherry blossom.

Stitch by stitch

Your life will shine, again. 

(Poem 2021)

Boiled-Milk Sky

With her spoon

She stretches shiny skin

Against the inside wall of her least favorite mug,

Porcelain white with smiling red dots. 

She’ll savor it for later,

after the last gulp

One delightful pleasure,

Her afternoon chicory coffee.

My stomach turns.

Wrinkled paper thin milk crust

Hangs of her spoon,

Drying,

Turning into a brown patch.

Her face 

Pressed against the glass window

Surveys the street

One hand holds her rosary.

One up, two down.

Her paralyzed arm wrapped in a silk scarfs

painted with green and orange parakeets,

is perched on the window sill.

There is nothing to do

Just slide the beads

And talk to the parakeets.

A brief hand-wave at the post woman,

Slight head nod 

To the hurried neighbor.

A secret smile as she recognizes the bus

On route to the town of her youth.

Tangled memories.

See you next week, grandma?

end -

(the poem was inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s musing: “the weather this morning was so-so: dullish, but warm, a boiled-milk sky, with skin— but if you pushed it aside with a teaspoon, the sun was really nice, so I wore my white trousers.”)