Father's Day

 
My father lives in sawdust and solder,
he lives in the creaking
of my mother’s wooden floors.
My father lives
in lake tossed rowboats
and taut moorings,
in homemade lead sinkers
and the sharp-edged Tooth of the Pike.
My father lives
in the unforgiving canvas of a rain-soaked tent.

I sit in the park feeding pigeons,
thinking back on stories
of my father’s escapades,
while the pigeons of his city
nest at their ease under bridges,
currently undisturbed
by young men shimmying across trestles,
whose tender voices promise
only- God-knows-what.

Fukushima---Postcards

一
The leaves of the basho
lie curled and brown;
the laughter of the plum tree
is silenced.

二
Red sun rises on broken city,
tsunami swallows earth.
News of the death of the last geisha,
an omen--
songs of gaiety
no longer to be sung.


三
Black Crow weaves his tapestry
in pearl grey threads of mourning;
Black Crow weaves his tapestry
in threads of watery grief.

四 
A pale dawn
and far in the distance
a lark sings the
memory of spring to come.



五
Hope is to be found
and lost
in the transience of
sakura.

Postcard

(Image: Postcard, Laurie Hoffman)

The birth of beauty

Butterflies emerge ~
molten gold
from a sapphire sea.
Creation draws
its breath in wonder.
God smiles.


(Image:  In the Butterfly Garden; Laurie Hoffman)

In the end, it's Hopelessness that kills

"And then we came out  to see once more the stars."   Dante


When we came at last to see the stars
we struggled  in vain
to gain hope.
We tried to gaze in wonder,
pride-filled in the proof
that God  held our civilization
above all others,
to read into radiance
the nod and wink of
Divine Approval,
acknowledgement of our status
as unique and favored sons.
We struggled to grasp at straws,
to cling to myth and
ancient superstition.
And then the stars began to fall and
we tried tried tried to read  the promise
of wishes granted.
But in the end all that was left
was to cower under rocks
and primitive umbrellas,
weeping the dawn
of apocalypse.

Photograph

I saw the end of Antiquity
in the faces of men
lying murdered in the street,
in the failed humanity
of leaders of state,
in fallen museums
and desecrated mosques.
I saw the end in a fallen red kite,
in the laughter of children
now silenced.
The eye is the shutter of discord
whose merest opening
elicits the entrance

of death.