Call Housekeeping

Custodians Creed

Lord Spare Us!

arrives day in, day out

a steady dribble swollen to raging torrent

to drips and drabs

round and round

so on and so on and so on and so on

thronging the rope line

craning to glimpse

the turnstiles and restrooms

swanning about the gift shop

palming gold plated tchotchkes

humming along

to hushed harp piped in

to lubricate sales

the sour bite

of a stolen glance

at a wristwatch

pursed lips

echo of tapping feet in the terminal

little details I notice in passing

Me, content in coveralls

guiding this utility cart

weaving in and out

of milling petitions  

anxious to make their connections

while I waltz a mop

through the concourse bathrooms

striving to make a difference

in My own small omnipotent way. 

Buy American

One Car Garage

Chuck Berry made Maybelline  

from the snarl of parts

he found hopelessly tangled

in a rough cut pine crate

on a high mossy shelf

above a calloused window

weeping jaundiced light

in trailing veins

across the fender skirts of a well-appointed

Cadillac shoehorned between

Mark Twain’s cobbled vernacular and Edward Hopper’s

blackened crucible

curved lip spackled

with the flat light of day and late night shadow.

White wall tires

suggest life preservers to Hank Williams

drowning in the deep plush

of the back seat

while Louis Armstrong and Arthur Miller

uncoil jumpers

and argue whether it’s red to red

black to black

or the other way around.

Crossing the yard

Trinity

Three times now I’ve seen them.

Crossing the yard

but three weeks ago

led, leashed by the dog

to the solemn Norway spruce

that celebrates mass

and blesses her gifts

the third such that morning.

Enamel blue sky

after a three day snow

precise transverse incision

above the southern horizon

inscribed by a thieving sun

that pockets the night

in minute slivers we’ll never miss. 

Motor drone, born full term

into silence, triplets

soothing themselves

a low hymn sung in one voice

gracing the frame

at three o’clock

tacking west to skirt the zoo

slender as books

of stillborn poems

wing spans a third again or better

the length of each slippery yellow lozenge

nosing ahead

through an alphabet

of airy proverbs

hacked to pieces in prop wash.

Details, details

the devil detained at the boarding gate

pilots banking for a final run

feathering sticks

dipping wings

in blessed watery sunlight

haloed crosses peeling off

one, two, three

the dog and me

crossing this temporal vail

one shy of a triumvirate. 

Loose Change Magazine

The poem Orangutan, and images of original paintings by Dave Hardin, appear in the latest issue of Loose Change, A Literary Magazine. 

http://www.loosechangemagazine.org/

New poem

Rainy Spring Morning

Rainy spring morning is older now

slower, less inclined to bound

up the down staircase

or greet sudden dawn with a drop jaw slap

to the forehead, night

somehow no longer young, drinking

whole days in breathless gulps from a clanging pail

knobby throat exposed, bobbing

lewd and naked, heedless

of a sopping shirt, unaware

exactly when he took to sipping primly

from the lip of the minute cup

a careful hand cupped to a careless chin

catching the gesture

in the window

above the sink

beneath the sleeve

of light that smears charcoal features

and quotes from windows past

the glow that drew him on his way to school

tucked way back

in the shadow of huddled trees

new leaves sluicing rain in whispers

onto the backs of sidewalk worms. 

Rainy spring morning twists the band

on his cudgel finger

grateful mate to the one you wear

dialing in this hypnotic spell of molten gold

a boy for a moment 

lingering in front of a house

upturned palm catching creamy light

that runs through his fingers

and pools around his clumping buckle boots.