National Poetry Month

I should have written six poems by now; however, the first five days were so busy that I couldn't . Now I am fighting inertia.

So I will post five poems "from before" and add a sixth one, hot off the press:

#1

Typo

One slip of the finger and

Divine becomes Diving

Deep in my dream to the floor of the flooded cellar

Through a window to the green sheen

Of chlorine depths of the swimming pool

At Lenape Park

Where I opened my eyes to stinging wonder

Of watching my white wrinkled feet

Flutter like flippers

And back to Harry Potter somersaulting into

The lake and down to the lair of the grindylow

And back to myself,

Sprinting off a cliff into Crater Lake,

Turquoise and freezing

Gritty grey crumbled lava clouding my eyes

As I plunge further, further,

To the center of breath.

#2

The Stone Dog

My father and I

Wander the Protestant cemetery

Oaklands

Examining the tombstones

And a flat stone

With a life size stone dog

A Labrador

Keeping watch

Over the bones of his owner.

I’m small enough to ride him,

And I do, while the brown leaves flag me

While my father smokes and waits.

#3

Peripheral Vision

My mother can see me this way

Seam ripper stole her center

Partly curly hair weather

Perennial Thyme

Capricious Apocrypha,

burning aura of clementines.

#4

Saving Stamps

candy for later

the cerulean warbler

money

my soul

#5

The Meaning of Radiance

Radiation still cooking my colon

Years after the machine

Delivered its killing light

Waves in defenseless air

Through the tissue in the wrong place

At the wrong time.

Light of sun distilled, forced

Through tunnels into funnels

Glowing the teeth of the smile of the

Child in Hiroshima.

The Meaning of Radiance

#6

Corot Blue

puckered with clouds,
Damask wards off rain
Father Hopkins, lick ink into my pen
shake blue over paper.