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3 Poems up on WBUR's Cognoscenti for Poetry Month

                 In the Dead of Winter in Somerville                         Underneath the street,                         beside the tracks,                         between the trains,                         an Asian woman—all angles,                         few curves, removes her black cloak,                         inserts her violin between her chin                          and collarbone and launches into                          “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones                          that morphs into some wild, jazz/blues fusion,  and draws a crowd with raised eyebrows and unexpected smiles. We toss dollar bills into the worn case at her feet. When the train roars in, she stops and bows and we clap. Do you have a CD? Someone calls. She shakes her head. She is older than I thought. Her roots are gray. I step onto the train wondering how many years it took to reach that plateau of facility with bow and strings.
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The Loss of a Sense of Grace

After Aretha Franklin passed away, one of the video clips shared on social media showcased Aretha singing “Natural Woman” at the Kennedy Center with president Obama and Michelle in the audience. The association of Aretha Franklin and Obama is noteworthy because it represents something we’ve lost in the past couple of years both in the presidency and as a country, and that is, a sense of grace.  Obama had many flaws as a president. He was not a political animal.  He could not twist arms like Lyndon Johnson. He was too reasonable with his opponents. When he reached across the aisle, he expected someone to grasp his hand and instead it was slapped away. Instead of withdrawing from Afghanistan as he promised he would, he consulted the generals who surprise, surprise, asked for more troops. He refused to punish Wall Street when they bet against America and won while the rest of us lost. And he turned the funds for rebuilding the infrastructure over to the states resulting in the state
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Democracy on Life Support

  It appears that our democracy may not be the best system there is. It does not seem to be working. It is pretty easy to see that America is a little off, a sick country. Sure, Donald Trump is a big time grifter whose real estate empire is built on Russian crime money, a thief who doesn’t pay his taxes, a liar who exploits our bankruptcy laws, an accused rapist and serial sexual assaulter, a racist and a xenophobe who promotes conspiracy theories, but every country has people like that. The problem is not only that we enabled him to succeed but that we actually elected him to the most powerful office in the world. And now that he is engaged in a slow-motion coup, refusing to apply sanctions on Russia approved by Congress, attacking the courts, the press and the department of justice, the lackeys that elected him grovel at his feet and sing his praises. For a long time, Americans have engaged in a form of willful ignorance. It is woven into the ludicrous notion held by three
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His Name is John

His Name is John --for my brother If you hadn’t named him you could say it wasn’t meant to be. If you had another boy, you could wipe the slate clean-- use the name again. But you never had another boy... John is your name too and sometimes when someone calls, you hear an echo. On weak days you listen and succumb to the sadness which is a lake you fall into fully clothed and emerge cold to the bone. At such times you wonder who he might have been, how he would have sounded when he laughed. He spent less time out of the womb than in it. Now, no-one in the family mentions the baby. So, each year you kneel, light a candle, say his name.
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At The End For Bill Rooney He was so old his bones seemed to swim in his skin. And when I took his hand to feel his pulse I felt myself drawn in. It was as faint as the steps of a child padding across the floor in slippers, and yet he was smiling. I could almost hear a river running beneath his breath. The water clear and cold and deep. He was ready and willing to wade on in.
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White Crest Beach Grains of sand tangle our hair as the ocean advances up the beach behind our backs and water invades the inlets between our toes. I roll over and you kiss the salt off my lips, your head looming above eclipses the sun; your blond hair shades my face. I see your mouth curl: pearl necklace on display. When you pull away, shafts of light shutter my eyes and my skin offers the annual cellular sacrifice: small price for this bliss.
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"Getting in Trouble (short story)

It isn’t being left home alone I mind. I was on my own for a long time in my life before I met my wife. What I mind is that she treats me like a child and hides the car keys on me when she goes out. Like a blue-footed booby, I’m grounded. And neither one of us is extinct—yet! Plus, there are no Rice Krispies--what I always have for lunch. Decaf for breakfast. I don’t go for all that have a big breakfast stuff. I’m six feet tall and I weigh 130. Every year I lose a little weight. Anyway, Ellen, my wife, is here in the morning if I need any help with anything, but she goes off to do her volunteer work at eleven at the museum or the damn church. She takes the bus. She cares more about those people than she does about me. That’s obvious. The nurse comes by in the afternoon. Really I’m just alone for a couple of hours and the fact is, I don’t go anywhere. I stick around the house, maybe work in the yard, rake or weed the garden. The paper boy, nice kid, always says hello, delivers the
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