CHAMPION ANGLER (MASTER BAITER)

He walks by night
flashlight at the ready,
he holds it steady
to keep his prey at bay.
Creepily, he slinks; fisher by day,
and by the way, he’s good at his craft.
You’d have to be daft
to walk in the shadows
of the dark moist night,

they’re right under foot
as night owls hoot, and they scoot.
Creepily, they slink, earthbound
and round, for now off the hook.
But as the day breaks
he’s got what it takes,
and anglers, they wait;
they always take the bait.
Just the earthworms he’s chosen.
Two bucks for a dozen.

THE FISHERMAN

Afloat.

On life’s lake languid,

lost in contemplative moments

of nature’s whispers and the ripple

stirred by each minuscule motion.

No nibble besets his anticipation,

but visions of a soul dancing freely

upon every sun glinted wave,

show the change inherent in each

breath of a restless and longing heart.

Nothing else matters. A bad day fishing

Is the best good day life offers.

The line stretches taut as

serenity soars. A fisherman,

lost in the moment.

Afloat.

IN MY FATHER'S HANDS

Life.

Held in the balance,
held in high regard,
held in my Father's hands.

Held within my heart,
held in respect,
held in my Father's hands.

Held in loving embrace,
held with reverence,
held in my Father's hands.

Held for a lifetime,
held in fervent memory,
my Father, the hands that held.

Life.



Walt

JUST LUNCH

My Father.
An hour out of my work day.
Every Tuesday, every noontime.
He, the master carpenter.
He, the drummer.
Me, the wide eyed boy again.
In awe of all the demons
he has battled and defeated.
A warrior in the fight for his life.
Our old kitchen; my old man.
“How you doing, Pops?”
“Sonny, I’m dying.”
With three words
I died a bit myself.
Just lunch. Much to digest.

A SELF PORTRAIT

I. THE FAÇADE

Calming serenity.
Congenial, affable,
peacefully coexisting.
Short of stature, but,
full of gargantuan dreams.
Mid-aged middle,
slightly round posterior,
roundly slight physique.
Rather myopic; presbyopic,
hair line in gradual retreat,
but never in full surrender.
Nicked, chipped, rough
and calloused hands.
Laid back and cool under
pressure and fire.
Observant and loyal;
were I a bird, your falcon;
were I a dog, your beagle.
Flat feet, reconstructed knees,
bum shoulder on my left,
always a right-hand man.
Never let ‘em see your sweat,
Walt.

II. BENEATH THE SURFACE

Fanatically frantic.
Undeniably, laughable,
quietly resistant.
Short of temper, but,
full of fire.
Simmering kettle.
Passionate, compassionate,
always thinking.
Cranium churning, never
burning out on words,
expressive, descriptive.
Nicked, chipped, rough
and calloused heart.
Writing from my soul,
my pain, my want and my need.
Comically unforgettable;
sometimes quite regrettable;
always “romantical”.
Productive, prolific.
fertile, fruitful,
deceptively youthful,
always a write-hand man.
Ever searching for the real
Walt.

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM…

Night falls clumsily,
tripping over every wink, and blink, and nod.
A nocturnal clod, cohort of the sandman,
deliverer of sleep and nightly nocturnal visions.

My mattress beckons,
soft and trance inducing,
seducing me with thoughts of slumber.
And if I should such sleep require,

do I venture yet to dream?
For my nights used to provide
essential rest for my survival,
but most times I feel deprived of repose

for reasons not so clear
when nightly noises reverberate in my ear.
At times I find myself nodding
off to a place midway between

hibernations and dawning,
third star to the right,
and straight on ‘til morning.
These short catnaps are wonderful things

until my internal timepiece
loses moments to a snoring snooze.
But, fall asleep I do!
This creative soul tosses and turns

in Technicolor dreams, disrupted
by disorders of the night.
A narcoleptic siege pulls my eyelids shut.
Anytime, every time, anywhere, everywhere.

Disruptive sleep apnea
slaps them right open into
a sleepless stare.
CPAP be damned

if insomnia pays a call
and curse the midnight hour
should I take a somnambulistic fall.
Were I to approach a drowse tainted state,


my RLS will shake me, wake me kicking and flailing.
And then I remember the REM
and I slip into dream stage
as rapidly as my eyes can move.

One evening, I can fly.
No wings, no plane, just a soar
into the wild blue yonder…

There’s a loving reunion.
Sandy beach, roaring surf
and you back at my side…

A chase ensues, thrilling
and suspenseful, dangerous
and life threatening…

I’m riding on a bullet train,
the red-eye to morning,
strafe with innuendo…

Erotic arousals
in exotic locales,
every night…

Free-falling from the pinnacle
of an endless precipice
jolted awake by the treacherous landing…

Caught in a sensuous embrace
with a ravenous vixen.
We inch close to that passionate kiss…

…and my damn alarm
gives me a rude awakening.
Sleepus Interruptus!

IN THE BOTTOM OF MY BAG

The wind blows cold
and whips the frosted breath
across my frozen cheeks.
I stand abreast my steel railed chariot

beneath the Northern Lights,
I listen to the sound of the
antlered behemoths pounding
a rhythm that drives my determination.

Midnight.
My trek begins,
rising to heights that until now were
unreachable. Unfathomable.

The wind no longer burns my face.
It soothes and comforts and fills my heart
with this love I have known my entire life.
With each bound I leave the desire

of all below. Rapid as night
my chore is ventured.
From village to town to city.
Each stop is a step closer

to my final destination.
For deep in the bottom of my bag
is a wisp of a frozen sigh.
It bears the name of you.

I slide down with my treasure in hand,
tip-toeing across the floor
to the side of your bed.
I warm the wisp with

the hotness of my breath.
I place it on your forehead.
The warmth of a breath,
a wisp of a sigh.

A kiss from a love so true
brought to you on this Christmas.
I am filled with the joy of the season.
My bag is empty, my journey is done.

I am Santa Claus.

HARD BOILED

I give you the egg.
We are told of it’s
incredible edibility!
The infinite futility
of which came first.
Or if it even came at all.
Elliptical ovum of
symmetric simplicity,
I can’t for the life of me
tell you apart.
Each dozen, all the same,
so, here is the game:
Take a carton of eggs,
and hard boil a few.
Back in the crate,
they still appears “new”,
but their difference is
truly like night and splat!
The truest representation
of our humanity:
good or bad,
we are all “eggs”.
Some pristine and near perfect,
some slightly cracked,
some shells split badly,
these lose it all together.
And some are just raw
and uncooked, ready to be
made into any heart’s desire.
Be it scrambled, over-easy,
omelet or sunny-side up,
soufflé or fritata,
or soft or hard boiled,
its versatility and possibility
is endless and of legend.

Raise your eggcup to the egg!

And now, a toast to bread…

THE POET

There in silence, he sits.
This solitary soul searching
the scenes around him for a glimpse,
a fragmented fractal, on which to
pose his imperfect pondering.
On the surface, a catatonic
cad, aloof and disinterested,
unaffected by life’s happenstance.
But below the layers of sinew
and fiber, there is a spark.
A speck of a spark in which
all the answers of life dwell.
It flits and dances in his soul,
it infects his longing heart,
it leaps boundlessly to his vacuous
cranium, this arena of thought,
where it has room to roam.
Bouncing from synapse to
neuron and back,
expanding disproportionately
to the importance it assumes
but oh, the wonder it beholds.
Inside this infantile ember
there exists an avalanche
of ideas that simmer for the moment,
and have smoldered for all
of his lifetime.
Romantic ruminations of a
love lost or a soulmate found,
ridiculous rhymes of a playful tone,
tactile meandering of a verbal nature,
all abiding in his treasure chest of intellect.
He shifts in his seat, our
spellbound simpleton, this
multi-syllabic snake charmer,
as a tendril of thought comes
a bit too close to that glowing
epicenter of expression. They merge,
taking on a life all its own
to flail unencumbered, this
cerebral conflagration
burning brightly.
Extracting a pen, he jots three words
on the back of his left hand,
an apparent reminder of whatever
bit of brilliance just entered his mind.
Gathering together his scraps of paper,
and his pieces of the puzzle he is crafting,
this omni-present observer strolls
three benches down to take a
new vantage point to view this vignette
called life. And glancing at his
left-handed, self-made tattoo
he reads the words he had written.
It states quite simply,
“I’m a poet”.
Rather satisfied with his station
in this complex world, he writes
with a singular hope to touch
yet another soul.

IN THE MORNING MIST

You stand alone in the morning mist
with just the sound of
the world awakening all around you.
Peacefulness is all you feel
in the dewy pall of night’s bedtime.
The air is still and currently, so are you as well.
Your eyes are closed and you breathe in,
the humid morning filling your lungs
just as she has filled your heart.
Thoughts are clear and are full
of the wonder that nature has displayed before you,
and fate has placed in your heart and hands.
You think of her and her place in your life.
Of how empty it had become before her arrival,
of how she has done a service of love to your soul.
She has delivered to you in a special way,
a love of a pure and saving nature, a lifeline
from your island to her shore.
You have tied it around your waist
and you clutch it dearly, allowing her
to pull you to her loving safety,
to pull you into her, where you
belong and always have.
Her eyes are like beacons,
burning through the morning mist
and bringing her sunshine to warm your soul.
You breathe in this morning mist
which holds the savor of her
and you devour her nourishment,
satisfying and sustaining you.
You are alive with the sense of all that she is.
You listen for the sound of her,
a euphonic sound as simply complex
as the beat of her heart within your own chest.
The dawn appears to escort these mists of morning
away to a place where they may take their rest
and prepare them to return to you every morning.
For they are her.
They surround you, as she surrounds you.
They soothe you, as she does.
They are present, much as she is ever present within you.
You awake from dreams to the morning mist,
not knowing where one ends and the other begins,
not knowing where your love for her ends and where hers
for you begins as well.
They become one and that is all that matters.
Being with her is being alive.
Loving her is being loved.

HOMING PIGEON: DOVE OF LOVE

Long ago, I held you
in my hands like a beautiful bird,
afraid to loosen my grip
for fear you would fly away.
One day, I did let you go
and fly you did. But,
amazingly, you returned to my hands.
I hold you loosely now,
like the beautiful bird you remain to be.
And you have decided to stay.
If you love something, set it free…

RIVER, CURRENTS AND STREAMS

Love flows.
It flows like a river.
Raging rapids of romance
from me to you.
I cast my raft on your waters
and you take me to a place
that I have held you in my dreams
for all my life.
Your surface is placid
and I drift effortlessly from bank to bank.
But your movement below is frantic.

Love flows.
It flows in currents.
Churning, changing;
charging and caressing.
I feel your undertow pull me
in a spastic dance toward
everything we once held dear
and finds us holding again.
Your waters are therapeutic
and I escape within your smile,
letting you take me further upstream.

Love flows.
It flows like a stream.
A steady float within your heart;
a brisk swim against the flow.
The resistance gives way to an open embrace.
And I hold you ever so close
as the water washes like waves
over our oneness.
And love flows
from me to you and back again.
As it has for all our days.

Love flows.
It flows like a love unrestricted.
Unconditional and unrelenting;
blooming and growing ebbs and tides.
Flowing like a river,
a current,
a stream.
Filling my very soul with your “water”.
Quenching this thirst for you
and leaving me wanting more.

Love flows.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

Rambling, rumbling, rattling,
Rocking and rolling,
Flashing, blinking strobes of electricity
Illuminate my mind with blinding brilliance.
Oh, I didn’t notice the surge of late spring rain.
I was just sitting here thinking of you.

The lightning is your internal sunshine.
The thunder is the roar of your heartbeat.

You really shake it, don’t you?

OASIS

An eerie and desolate wind
whipped and whirled,
devilishly bitter; to bite,
stab and sting
the reddened flesh
of my worn and frozen face.
Winter’s wrath; a season scorned,
making up for time lost.

I stood there on that deserted snow drift
and I squinted and searched for a refuge
most kind and loving.
My breath was squeezed from my lungs
And let anxiety wreak havoc
with my panicked mind.
I ‘thirsted’ for the quenching taste
of a potion to warm me from within,
a sanctuary from that ravaged storm.

On my horizon you stood
to shine your beacon and guide me
to a safe and protected place.
A haven for my weary soul to rest
and take nourishment in the taste
of a warm and loving kiss.
The arid “sands” of that arctic desert
disguised as winter’s wonderland,
beat against my leathered skin
to blind my eyes with their frozen needles.

I had nothing to lose, so I shielded my face
from the buffets of those crystallized darts,
and moved toward the oasis that was your heart.
You never waited for me to reach you,
you always rushed to me, arms opened
to draw me into your fiery embrace.
Your weak and fragile arms wrapped around me
and sheltered me from the cold, to share
your body heat and melt
my glacial façade. You uncovered a smile,
the facial manifestation of my jubilant heart.

You gathered me into your bosom and consumed me
with the pulse that we had shared
for more than thirty years.
A sultry and compassionate shelter;
a fortress of a stirring, dedicated devotion,
my sanctum, my port in that storm, my asylum.
My heart had recharged and my flesh
melted from your solicitous caresses.
I sought you out in life’s wintry torrent
to have you become my harbor of tranquility
and chamber of vitality.

Your memory remains an oasis in this desert of my frozen soul.