Monthly Archives: March 2020

                              Not with a bang but a whimper.
                                   – T. S. Eliot (“The Hollow Men”)

A belly I may shed
before I leave this end—
my father wizened,
spending his before he died.

                              I yield to time,
                              to the absence
                              of reason.

I feel ambition
and all its diversions
wane in the soft dirt
of familiar trails:

habits I cling to
so as not to get lost
in the grandstands

to watch the war
and any hope for peace
expire until I leave

                              the poetry to others—
                              the exultant songs
                              of living things

we may finally become
with a little luck
to be among them.

There is a knack to stacking wood
and wrapping packages in brown paper
you learn with time.

A metal pail for White King D
saved for picking blackberries
beyond the clothes line.

A drawer-full of safety pins,
balls of string with rubber bands
and paper clips held us together

in emergencies. She survived
the Spanish Flu of 1918
birthing my father, youngest daughter

of an Edinburgh schoolmaster,
arrived in Fresno to teach the Indians
English—and me the poetry of Keats.