Nor'easter Morning 
She wears the blouse she bought
nor'easter morning
after the dentist appointment
after she cancelled class
after, in the waiting room,
she read about this quirky store
and it was just two blocks away
and she didn't find it quirky
after she made it home
on what turned out to be
the last bus
after he called to tell her
he'd made it to Brooklyn by subway
and could get a ride home
but had work to do
and the scaffolding around their building
blew off and broke three windshields
and she called him back
to ask where her Christmas presents
were just in case
and later he took the first subway
he could get
and ended up on Lex
and tried to get a bus crosstown
and finally he and others
discovered a cab
and the transverse was closed
and it took nearly four hours
and really it's one of her favorites.
Conversation Piece
In that old apartment
it took me years to learn
you can't turn the radiators
half-way on
so the water leaked
between the plywood floor
which cracked and splintered
a bandaid covered a hole
in the kitchen window
from before my time
there were stains on the rug
I never tried to lift,
we never dared to paint
behind the bookshelves
Nobody really
ups and says the words,
how I've let my life run down
but Julia
who I sublet to
last summer
says maybe it will be good
I left that place
she thinks of how depressed
I must have been:
curtains drawn over windows
that haven't been washed
in ten years
all I can say
is I got into that habit
when I lived in my parents' house
while everyone in town watched
knowing I was crazy
it's better now
even so
my first country winter
I spilled cold water
pouring it into a pot
and the woodstove cracked
I yanked open the back door
and the lock came off
taking a desk upstairs
I had to chip away
at the molding
I patched the molding
put the lock back on myself
and bought a new stove
saying how it's easier
to cope with things here
but Julia, thanks
for cleaning the apartment,
as two men I work with said
it never looked so good
I'm better now
I won't bother to mention
the windows in this new apartment
overlook an alley
and it's mostly pitch dark
even with the curtains open
and these are the same curtains
I brought from the old place
and no matter what we say
it doesn't change things.
Unfinished Elegy
for Bernie Solomon, 1946-1995
Punch-drunk from driving all night,
we read the billboards
all through North Carolina:
South of the Border
fireworks
a motel
a gift shop
I forget what else
just as I forget
what those billboards said
I only know what we read into them,
all of it sexual
things like South of the Border
standing for below the belt,
the little man in his sombrero
smirking
almost as good
as Burma Shave
We stopped there to buy your kids
a huge stuffed bear to share
then continued south
If there was only the sensual
between us then, over the years
we grew too close
for even that
Nineteen years
and we never drove south
again together
Every Christmas, flying over
on our way to Florida
I described those billboards
to my husband, and every Christmas
he said I was crazy
Then there was the year
we drove and I pointed out
those signs and he saw nothing
and we had dinner with you
and your wife also saw nothing
and I saw ...
Kibbutz Yad Mordechai
They couldn't wait for trees to grow.
For houses, they used the gold stone
we saw in Jerusalem.
Along the hillside life-sized statues
of Egyptian soldiers in the attack
they held off offer all the shade
they've need of.
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