Lady on a Bicycle

With each turn
of the pedals
one thigh
strained up
out of her
cut-off jeans
while the other
reached down
demurely
to cover itself

Navy Man

Saturday mornings Dad walked
alone on the beach, coming home
just as the family gathered
to watch Notre Dame football.
He drank beer and complained
to the wife he called "Mama"
that our team didn't stand
a chance, the couch was a moron,
the potato chips were stale.
Rather than turn up the heat,
he put on his frayed pea coat.
At halftime, no matter how cold
it was, we played two-hand touch
in the back yard; Dad watched
with his closed mouth turned down
like the wings of a seagull,
then yelled for us to wipe
our feet before we came back in.
If the game was close at the end
sometimes he changed the channel,
afraid that whether the Irish
won or lost, he might cry.

None of us slept the night
Mama died, and in the gray
of early morning Dad didn't see
me stretched out on the sofa
as he slipped into the kitchen
to call her brother and say:
"She's gone." He sobbed,
and cawing sounds ripped
from his throat and chest.
His whole body rocked
like a piling in a storm.

Rain to Roses
--- in memory of Molly Rose Kelly

From tight hospital whiteness
my Irish Catholic mother-in-law
held my cold Protestant hands
and asked if I'd brought
my squash racquet.
She drifted in and out
of her self, and then
there was no sign of breathing.
The long hand of the clock
snapped forward; she lurched
awake and smiled, "It's not over
till the fat lady sings!"

My blue Air Force jacket
and Larry's dark glasses
disappeared the day we buried her;
Mom took just what she needed
for the flight to heaven.
She's up there smiling
in her macho outfit,
humming through the clouds
bringing rain to roses.
Thunder is God guffawing
at her jokes.

Desire

There is a piece of
coal deep inside me that wants
to be a diamond

Otherness

Each night we touch and talk,
slowely learning the strange otherness
of each other

grass turns yellow
gray air lies down
before the summer rainstorm

too tired to talk
you sleep in your clothes
talk in your sleep

woodpecker drills me
awake with his monotone
makes me think of work

pumping high
in the swing at the twilight
no regrets

spillway as full as
the moon tonight, mosquitoes
biting like walleye

The Poet's Wife Resorts to Sarcasm

Our bodies still coupled
but cooling,
I tell her there's a sale
on lawn furniture
at the discount store.
Cooling fast now,
she tells me
"that's a poetic thing to say
at a time like this.
You're a cross
between John Donne and Ogden Nash."