Mommy Is Always With You

Inspired by parents, healthcare workers and first responders, who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in these hard times.

Easter  bunnies and Easter chicks,
May peep from your pillow quite changed.
No Easter egg hunts will we see for awhile,
But, mommy is always with you, my child.

Bunny ears are hand-sewn and stitched,
Next year you will have them brand new.
Colored paper is grass in a home-made style,
And, mommy is always with you, my child.

Let me hold you so very  close,
Let me keep you away from harm.
Together we’ll bake bread and play ‘till we smile,
Yes, mommy is always with you, my child.

At end of day, our prayers we pray,
As I put my baby to sleep
Though we both may never forget this hard trial,
Your mommy was always with you, my child.

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.

Beyond This Moment

Over wires and wavelengths, searching for a spark…
Connecting…losing connection..Ground Control, we have a problem…
Cowering, grasping the frayed edges of a receding world,
Watching it flounder in an apocalyptic ebb-tide of grief, hubris, delusion…
The bitter cold of it gnawing our bones.
Brother, can you spare a word?  Brother, can you spare a touch?
Not safe, not yet, nor knowing when that yet may be.
Building towers and moats that imprison insidiously,
Until precious thoughts cannot climb to an open window,
Grappling, we tether loved ones to our breathless bodies,
To float them, as the ark is filled with holes,
Pleading, “If we die, even though we die, let us die… Not. Alone.”
Tired hands break the water, submerge, then rise again to prove,
That hope lives.
We hold tightly to each other over airwaves, and in numbers, find strength.
Our hearts believe the promise of salvation, given to us in blood.
We are loved. We are forgiven.  We are.. “Not. Alone”.
A dove flies above us, carrying a green branch in its mouth.
It sings a sweet song and its music gives purchase in the rising storm.
We are children of a higher grace.  We are part of a divine plan.
We are stronger than this and We. Can. Survive…Beyond this moment.

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.

Back at the Cabin

Breeze soughs among
uphill poplar stands
Newborn Rachel’s clothes
hang out to Sun-dry
White-throated sparrow
drops her final note
whose loud lack haunts
consciousness all day
Expectation unfulfilled
pattern recognition lost

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.

For Marion Higley

Light-filled woman, she,
College-taught and Bishop’s wife,
Baptized on a worn, porcelain-metal table
In a plank house on the edge of pine woods.
Woman of tenderness, she,
Washing sand from the sun-warmed limbs of
Three fair daughters and a wheaten-haired baby son,
With hand-pumped well-water in a porcelain sink-basin,
While scented sun motes danced around their heads,
And laughter floated out across the rippling lake.

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Changes

Broken by brief rain
dull heat disappears
tail between its clouds
I recall late-August
mornings as a child
dressing by the fire
Oatmeal bubbled thick
in big blackened pot
Mountains unmoved
since we went to bed
Clouds now crest them
heavily like a toddler
riding your shoulders

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.

A Child With You

Like smudge
marks from
burnt sage

You arrived
at the moment I
needed to touch your

Golden hair
and peach
white belly

Rolling in the mud
by the oak trees

I am
a child with you

Oshkosh B’gosh
overalls and eyelashes

raised like
prayer flags

at the one act of mercy,
we all know
never happens

the way it
is supposed to

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.