Sediment

The ocean holds salt.

Fresh water gathers

in a depression.

 

One cannot litigate

against deluge.

 

Given time—

these memories—

one from another.

 

Sediment settles everything. 

Knight of Cups (Reversed)

 3/22/2026 (c)

It doesn’t matter the season.
Everything feels like winter.

The moon—
a frigid glow
caught in branches.

The knight strains
to feel anything
beyond the pose.

His cup—spilled
into aspen roots
that take it without question.

What remains is duty.

No one remembers
what that means.

The Wind

 Written in 1993. Revised 3/22/2026. (c)

Above the line of hard-hack and dune

three kites rise and fall like seabirds.

 

It is the wind, not the kites, that create music.

 

My mother mistook endurance for love.

My father takes any woman who’ll let him

and my mother thinks her anger will one day

draw him back. 

 

It doesn’t.

 

She kills herself --

Whiskey for dinner,

a twelve-hour six-day work week—

what would it take for him to notice.

 

Smoking, nail biting,

making high-risk choices,

 

We are all killing ourselves for him.

 

My friends and I, no wiser, married

illusions that faded

until we faced that love

does not transform us.

 

 In the distance, I hear the drone of a remote plane.

I cannot see it.  I pretend it does not exist.

It is easy to ignore, to move that sound

back behind the wreck of wind and wave.

The Metronome

 3/21/2026 (C)

At the upright, I suffered switched knuckles;

the metronome kept perfect time.

Emotions require a steady tempo—

Allegro had its place.

I’ve come to prefer Adagio.

Could I ever be at ease?

 

At 2 a.m. jam sessions with his buddies,

Daddy snapped photos of me on the kit

as though this were evidence that he was loving. 

I looked so goddamned happy.

Maybe I was.

 

On top of the upright, orderly stacked sheet music

defied gravity—when his stacks took over the table

they overrode family dinners.

 

Instruments littered our dining room.

Three trombones—

tenor and baritone saxophones.

No session went without water keys spitting, indiscreet,

that stained the carpet like permanently faded bruises.

There was an electric bass, and of course,

 

my two guitars, electric and acoustic.

I couldn’t fret or pluck.

My span always felt inadequate—

a judgment I could never put down.

 

By the time I reached high school

boys let me know music took man hands.

 

Eventually

drums crowded the table right out of the room.

One percussive or another was well within reach.

I favored the Guiro, for its heft and ease,

though my patterns were erratic and out of sync

with the metronome.  

 

Dad brought armloads of jazz and classical albums

to prove taste.

He articulated the composer’s name

as though he and they were regular drinking buddies. 

“That’s De-BUSE-e”, he’d say.

I’d say “deb-u-see” just to hear him curse me.

Still Here

 August 2016 (c)

 

This is the dream about you, Babe,

 

about how you visited me

in my 110-year-old

basement apartment—

 

The back brick wall failing.

Tree roots cracking asphalt waves.

Windows sooted by vehicle exhaust.

 

At 33 years to my 56, you are prettier

than the other boys that broke my heart.

 

My daughter was over with a friend,

I told them they needed to be nice.

Both grimaced.

 

Dishes piled in the sink,

cupboard door stained with coffee.

 

My ex-husband, who pops up

in every dream

as though we are still married,

I told him, too,

to be nice, to relax his fist.

 

Nice--

you don’t even question why…

 

You texted: here.

 

I went to the alley-side door—

a drywaller had finished troweling plaster

over the eight-step stairway. 

 

Plaster mud wet—

ankle deep—

the drywaller face-down in the white muck

I went to step around him, or on him,

his glare stopped me.

 

I went back for my phone—

I couldn’t find where I’d set it down.

 

The stairs imploded, rolling up

like a window shade.  

 

I ran out the Queen Anne Street side

so that I might find you. 

 

I walked too far,

all the way downtown to Benaroya.

The crowds were dressed for a show.

 

It rained.

Sun cast a harsh light where it could.

It was out of sequence.

 

On my way back you texted:

Still here, waiting.

I ran.

I jumped a train.

Caught the bus, finally.

 

I opened my door to a party

and someone suggested how strange

that I was the last to arrive.

It was already time to go. 

 

I found you, Babe

in the back room with another young boy. 

You had been playing building blocks,

race cars, hopscotch

 

all night.

Barefoot

 3/21/2026 (c) 

She was some girl!

She ran barefoot

through the neighbor’s yard,

trapped bees between her toes.

 

When her Brownie troop

went horseback riding,

she watched— outside the barn fence,

her foot—encased in bandaging,

swollen twice its regular size.

 

She didn’t complain.

Much.

 She forgave the bees,

 

after all, when their stingers went in,

they died.

Grandma's Painting

3/21/2026 (c)

Every summer, Grandma opens the closet  

under the stairwell— 

pulls out paintings she’d completed that year. 

 

Daddy grabs a beer— 

wanders off, the screen door banging  

like a mini tantrum.  

 

Momma casts a withering glare 

toward the void where Daddy was. 

 

Their wedding gift painting— 

hung it where the open front door 

could obscure it.   

 

When she lived with us, 

instead of contributing to expenses 

her savings paid for 

painting courses at the community center.  

 

Sometimes she practiced with crayons 

or pastel sticks at the kitchen table.  

 

Profiles— 

One of my brother,  

one of my sister.  

None of me. 

 

“I give up. I can’t capture you.”  

 

I stood there, 

obscured 

even without a door.