This We’ll Sell

I ask why she’s visiting Hawai‘i, and she tells me it’s to see her brotherHe’s stationed at Fort Shafter and … More

Life Masks

In art class we memorialized ourselves making plaster face castsA time stamp to last over all our years to comeOur … More

The American Cemeteries of World War II

All of us have seen photos of tulip fields, vibrant colors stretching for milesNo need to see those in the … More

On Seeing Hiroshige’s Sudden Rain

The seven on the bridge must deal with storm circumstancesBeings battered by a fearsome downpourCaught in the sudden deluge, some … More

A One, and a One

You try so hard to separate the singer from the songThe perspective you consider off, bizarre, or wrongAgainst everything you … More

Ode To Farming

A Hawai‘i boy spends an autumn weekend farming in WisconsinReplaces fence posts, pulls tree stumps using chains and a tractorCuts … More

Finding Peace

Floundering at the bottom of the darkest pitWhere he choked with every spluttered curseHis life depending now on letting anger … More

Like a Dentist

The staircase only goes to the second floor, but when I look up from the bottomI see eternity stretch out … More

The Case of the Eternal Adolescents

The Hardy boys never had sexNever produced progeny to perpetuate the detective family dynastyNo junior detectives carrying on the family traditionFrank … More

Serene

When you travel you’re tossed in a tornado of sights and soundsA tsunami of exposure flattening your brain with crushing … More

An Issue Put to Bed

The fine art of editing, he found,A gift acquired only over timeThe learning of life’s grammar and punctuationTo gather and … More

At the Louvre Museum

Amazing how quiet the multitude of viewersCompared to the works that speak to usEach visitor drawn to something somewhere hereThis … More

Night Watch

They sat and smoked the cigarettes they’d rolledLaughing softly about the way the grass grew hereCompared to how it waved … More

The Green Waves Roll

When they mow the lawns where the white crosses lieEach section of the American Cemetery at Normandy is cordoned offSeparating … More

Becoming a Nazi

This may not be the case if you live in GermanyBut I find it difficult to recall the namesOf stars … More

Uh

My dentist calls to tell me, after a lengthy search – before the internetHe’s found an orthodontist who doesn’t use … More

Lucky

In Operation Market Garden200 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne’s 504th Parachute Infantry RegimentRowed across the Waal River to take the bridge … More

My Father’s War Souvenir

Paulie, my father’s friend in Madison, tells meThat after the Army bussed him back to MilwaukeeHaving held onto him for … More

Annual Birthday Party at the Zeppelin Field, Nuremberg, Germany

He stands at the podium projecting out over the fieldGrips the railing, his hands a ghostly whiteThe master orator had … More

The American Cemetery at Lorraine, France

All of them, like brilliant dominoes, lined up in perfect rowsColumns of names carved in stone, these markers of soldiers … More