Poem of the Week

A 2 am fever roused my son, his cries rousing me. I held his sweating brow against my chest, my wife dipping the medicine into his mouth as my waking form swayed, our feverish love staying sleep for the next hour. A forgettable night, but for this poem, A night he will never remember. space The present an echo of the past, of the nights my mother, my father scooped me up, sacrificing cherished sleep to sooth me, to sooth my fever, something I do not remember something they will never be thanked for Their love burning a fever is in the early morning.

In the late night, in the shadows of dim stadium lights, one kid strode up to another and pummeled the hell out of him. The kid’s friend watched video phone rolling. space Out on this proving ground, this young man let that pent up primal nature out besting the mammoth before him, his beastial cry in our urban society, his rite of passage an undisturbing scene. space More disturbing his friend, video phone in hand, passively watching it all go by.

After you attended Mass at San Lorenzo, and while you leaned forward, your eyes watching Florence’s Fiume Arno flow quietly through the steam rising from the cappuccino cupped in your hands, I floated through space our Pennsylvania home today, traveling from the kitchen to the foyer then up to our bedroom, seeing you here. space If squad cars lurched into our driveway, and home were the crime scene, you, not me, would be the one convicted. Your fingerprints are everywhere, these rooms, on me, and on our anticipated future.

Maggie, How I Miss You (On a Tombstone, Waterloo Village) space Embedded in the earth, a weathered, worn stone chiseled with these words “Maggie, How I miss you.” space And all is said. space Out of the mind’s haze, a stoop shouldered man steps to a stop, at the foot of a fresh mound of shoveled ground. A young girl follows him. space “When is mommy coming home?” His tears answer, the first rain to work at weathering those words, “Maggie, How I miss you.” space After the years of our blending, after our hatchings have been tossed from the nest to fly however they may, One of us will be left to say, space “How I miss you.”

It seemed like a good idea at the time, when on the fourth of July, I bought California Flowers to celebrate the freedom of youth. That night, from the front seat of my friend’s Mustang, I lit one, and threw it over the roof, toward a group teens styling different, leaning against their black cars. The firework arched through a rolled down window, landed at some girl’s feet and went off. space It seemed like a good idea at the time, when at thirteen, I raced by my sister on my mean green machine, my bike edging hers, proving my manliness. A cattle truck pulled out onto the road, scaring her, causing her to turn, ending in tears, blood, and meshed metal. space It seemed like a good idea at the time, when I scaled the outside of our stave silo to prove how fearless I was, my cousin standing far below. I c...