If you catch a rainbow
you have to throw it back
because there just aren’t enough
to go around anymore.

Rainbows don’t grow on trees
you know & most of them
pop up out of nowhere
and fade away fast.

So if you catch a rainbow
throw it back for me
will you please
pretty please?

The Princess’s Poem

Here she is in the woods again
(surrounded by giants)
trying to get to grandmother’s heart
where stepmother can’t see her cry.

She longs for some help
from a wizard she knows
but he’s home in his garden
with problems of his own.

So plunging her arm
down her throat
like a hunter
she hauls out a shimmering fish

with razorlike teeth
& ears that can hear her
& grandmother’s
beautiful eyes.

poem to mom, owed to Alzheimer’s

and there you perch in your birdcage
high atop the trees and neighbors
observing the undulation, marveling
at the colors the world makes as it rots away

spying on leaves better left alone
compassionately watching them let go & twirl
broken helicopters spiraling down
resisting gravity with nothing but air & style

when they finally hit the ground
they seem to settle in for the duration
content to wait until it's time to act again:
meatless bit players in the animated carnival of love & fear.

My mother, Musette

My mom lived at the bottom of the ocean in Glenside, PA
where ages ago fish would wiggle
through her beautiful hair & leave eggs there
before their bones became stones and relics and ruin.

Mommy sat and sorted the trees that populated the hills
of an ever-undulating neighborhood
where the one real choice was up or down
and the colors of the leaves flicked past her eyes like time.

Mom slept inside a cozy box constructed by her sons
who’ve loved her without knowing her ‘til then
and the dog she adopted barked at everything,
bringing back the joy and noise of all her men and boys.

My mommy lived at the bottom of the ocean
and when I called her on the phone
her ploy was to ask as a joke who I was.
“Yours,” I told her and told her again.

in your eyes

a little girl's riding her horse right through town
following the trail of an outlaw she loves
collecting a menagerie of aromas and dirt
she looks down on the pedestrian world

now in the bathtub she screams loud & laughs
tickled to be all a-rub-a-dub-dub
splashing suds on all that she sees
making water her weapon of joy

I saw her today as I passed by your eyes
I felt her heart beating still wild
she said hi who're you where're you going right now
she said hey look at me I am me

she talks like a fisherman's daughter
with words that explode in the heart
she catches me drifting and sinking
and hauls me in safe to her boat

2 lives


Her mother used to put him in her playpen with her.
Concerned about her toys, she’d sit and stare —
waiting for him to make his move.

But he didn’t.

He loved only his teddybear,
straw-colored buddy who’d disappear sometimes
mysteriously like memory.

Until she’d find it,

save it from the wastebasket
where it sat, tidied-up & waiting
for someone just like her

to return it.

So she did, perhaps in thanks
for his lack of greed
or just because she worked that way.

It doesn’t matter.

She disappeared to grow a family,
he to save and savor a world
where everything could grow.

Which it did.

Then one day she remembered him
and hauled him back to life, back to love
back to herself, who held him tight

& stuffed the straw back in.

===================================================

for Buddy Furlow
8/28/92

When hearts fall apart
they do it a little at a time
as if the pieces might never meet again
like americans on the move whose lives
relocate in their sleep
who pay their bills by phone
and double up to sleep alone.

I keep my heart in a plastic bag
so when the time comes
for you to give it back
it’s easy, safe, convenient
and the air that it’s been missing
won’t rust it while I learn –
a good old roast with freezer burn.

And I don’t intend to give yours back
in the same state I was in
but rather mess it up a little
so next time it’ll pick a partner
who can take it lying down
and doesn’t want to push and shove
an everyday event like love.