I ask why she’s visiting Hawai‘i, and she tells me it’s to see her brotherHe’s stationed at Fort Shafter and…
Life Masks
In art class we memorialized ourselves making plaster face castsA time stamp to last over all our years to comeOur…
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…
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…
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…
Ode To Farming
A Hawai‘i boy spends an autumn weekend farming in WisconsinReplaces fence posts, pulls tree stumps using chains and a tractorCuts…
Finding Peace
Floundering at the bottom of the darkest pitWhere he choked with every spluttered curseHis life depending now on letting anger…
Like a Dentist
The staircase only goes to the second floor, but when I look up from the bottomI see eternity stretch out…
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…
Serene
When you travel you’re tossed in a tornado of sights and soundsA tsunami of exposure flattening your brain with crushing…
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…
At the Louvre Museum
Amazing how quiet the multitude of viewersCompared to the works that speak to usEach visitor drawn to something somewhere hereThis…
Night Watch
They sat and smoked the cigarettes they’d rolledLaughing softly about the way the grass grew hereCompared to how it waved…
The Green Waves Roll
When they mow the lawns where the white crosses lieEach section of the American Cemetery at Normandy is cordoned offSeparating…
Becoming a Nazi
This may not be the case if you live in GermanyBut I find it difficult to recall the namesOf stars…
Uh
My dentist calls to tell me, after a lengthy search – before the internetHe’s found an orthodontist who doesn’t use…
Lucky
In Operation Market Garden200 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne’s 504th Parachute Infantry RegimentRowed across the Waal River to take the bridge…
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…
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…
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…
Lanning Lee 