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The poems

• ordinary poets
  • ordinary poets
  • waitress
  • desk clerk
  • chaplain
  • cable guy
  • for sale
  • luck
  • to the rescue
  • personals ad
  • warrior
  • fashionista
  • valentine
  • normal
  • sean and teresa
  • fame
  • prepared
  • caste
  • soldier
  • PR girls do pepper jelly
  • chick place
  • in Hovland
• outrage
  • baja
  • priorities
  • illusion
  • mobile home
  • tour
  • mother
  • hair
  • hurricane
  • loser
  • Red Lake
  • privilege
  • poor
  • weapons of mass destruction
  • Lamborghini
  • fur
  • temple
  • American
  • Sedona
  • values
  • why they didn't leave
  • efficiency
  • shelter
  • lounge chair
• love
  • marriage
  • old marriage
  • vulnerable
  • terrarium
  • caretaker
  • material things
  • laundry
  • rose
  • that's all, folks
  • lost and found
  • daybreak
  • eHarmony
  • envy
  • love song
  • reunion
  • beds and ladders
  • prom
  • farewell
  • incurable
  • reset
  • vow
• family
  • mother's Hippocratic oath
  • bridge
  • shepherds
  • letting go
  • wedding
  • training wheels
  • first blessing
  • scales
  • Patta's car
  • psych ward
  • graduation
  • border collie
  • triage
• thinking too much
  • magic act
  • choices
  • logic
  • sorting
  • grudge
  • doubt
  • caste
  • film
  • aging
  • Shady Pines
  • alone
  • getting ready
  • hedgehog
  • clarity
  • lonesome
  • planes and anthrax
• hurting
  • paper cuts
  • collateral damage
  • conflict
  • forest fire
  • lights out
  • wounds
  • breakup
  • commitment
  • camouflage
  • knives
  • unfaithful
• hooked
  • hooked
  • adversary
  • monkey
  • addicts and angels
  • the First Step
  • serenity prayer
  • iceberg
  • sober
  • enabler
  • hope
• loss
  • grief
  • monsters
  • autopsy
  • ambush
  • bruise
  • giving back the daisies
  • checkout
  • bad check
  • talking with death
  • condolences
  • closure
  • full post
  • spring
  • jacket
  • resurrection
  • first year
  • passage
  • Michael
  • uncharted
  • lightness of being
• respite
  • carwash
  • September 11
  • Kauai
  • at the lake
  • muskrats
  • crisis intervention
  • balloons
  • star over Sedona
  • inspiration
  • pilot light
  • souvenirs
  • night of stars
  • balance
• reflections
  • politics
  • what Disney taught us
  • moon rabbit
  • Herzegovina
  • poetry games
  • autumn
  • envy and the snapshot
  • perfection
  • critters
  • prayer
  • Sodom and Gomorrah
  • otters
  • winter of the century
  • Louie
  • the zone
• the light side
  • home repairs
  • almost haiku
  • body parts
  • competition
  • typewriter vs...
  • style

© 2010-2013

material things

I finished the house – finally
The little porcelain house
With red shutters and blue gables
Reindeer with shiny black hooves
And red traces
A sleigh balanced precariously
On the quintessential
Kincade cottage
Snow people and animals
Pressed against the windows
Looking in on what must be
Certain warmth and gaiety inside

It took six years to paint –
About the time our relationship
Started – struggled – stopped
It could be it will now survive
Many Christmases
When we have not
How ironic
They say things don’t last
But they do
They outlast us
Lives, loves, careers
In sickness and in death
The little porcelain houses
Are passed down through the generations
Like little neutron bombs
They last like memories
While the people vanish
How fragile we are
How tenacious the things we create
The cheapest of objects
We dig them up
Find them in the ruins
Of lives spent
Looking for permanence
Looking for eternity