Tag Archives: Nature

The Glen

Remember when

we walked the Glen

down to the Manor

and back again

just passersby

to grass and sky

with inlet smiles

and sunlit eyes

Cicada rhythms

danced through the trees

the Sakonnet rolled

out to the sea

that world embraced

both you and me

Remember when

we walked no more

stopped skipping stones

along the shore

we buried secrets

in closet walls

dodged each other

in narrow halls

Glen strolls replaced

by trips to malls

by all-day meetings

and late-night calls

We lost ourselves

and raised the kids

crossed some lines

and hit the skids

then peeled apart

as our parents did

Mundanity paved over love

harsh words gave way

to push and shove

our home became

a handless glove

Does love lie dormant

at the Glen

under rotting leaves

and muddied Zen

or is Wolfe’s

“You can’t go home again”

as true as dirt and oxygen

where the fireflies

we choose to chase

are snuffed

by Moirai’s cold embrace?

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My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-911 America.

Blue Speck

Earth

the floating stone

we call our own

the blue spot argonaut

the snag in the wool of gravity’s pull

sustained by the grace

of the perfectly placed

Life

the spark in the dark

of the protozoa ark

biding its time

on destiny’s dime

stuck at the Stop and Go

of the never know

Unpropelled and single-celled

with no map or design

or intervention divine

mad as a hatter

and twice as sublime

The lone chromosome at

the slim-chance dance

of happenstance

For billions of years

we hobnobbed

in murky Jurassic tide pools

and heated ocean vents

above us

scalene shadows

of pterodactyl’s gliding

their featherless wings

warmed by a thuggish sun

the emergence beckoning

of our divergent reckoning

to that unguided moment

when we planted

a finned foot with no input

on the iffy shores of dinosaurs

tilting our thin-lipped

reptilian face towards

that acid-orange sky

Arrival survival

pockets of luck

worried, we scurried

from out of the muck

we crawled on our belly

for millions of years

dodging extinction

overcoming our fears

turning our backs

on oceans and seas

crisscrossing the plains

and carousing in trees

time shoved us along

without out any say

so, along we all went,

slowly making our way

Now look at us,

we’re a civilized mess

in the land of the more

we’ve never had less

Less kindness, compassion,

wisdom, and mirth

a desire for heaven

and disdain for the Earth

we guide planes into towers

and poison the air

we know what the fix is

but turn blindly to prayer

Danish Fatwas and papal decrees

we can’t reach the stars

when down on our knees

If we don’t break the chains

to the Gods we invented

if Batman’s and Banes

are the only incentive

then the fools will be ruled

by the vane and demented