old homestead

The shindig sheathed a shadowed year
in reams of cheese and streams of beer.
We stumbled home at half past four
and fell asleep upon the floor.

And I’m Doing Just Fine

A Christmas tree without the cheer
of kin close by to hold you near,
is just a mass of dying spruce
that lost its life in winter’s noose.

In a tan station wagon, cruising up Fifteenth Street,
we were mere seedlings, aching to shoot up from our
earthen pots.

Bare bones in the breeze, floating on the back of a
Victory-8, murmur of deprivation from the
shadows of their lives.

Meet me by the streetlight next to the mailbox that is
no longer there (you know the one); I shall wrap you in
the balmy blankets of 1996.

Jack Frost
jostles my jowls
in a wild woodland glossed
with glass, as a whining wind prowls
and howls.