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For Lorraine
When Do I Miss You? I miss you in the morning scurrying With side-long glances hurrying Into the business of the afternoon. I miss you in my walkabout Tom’s half-deserted streets Filled with the bleats Of unanswerable questions… I miss you in the past when you were not, And yet you were… And in the…
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The Reality of Us
Really? Is this how we like to spend our evenings (and, for some, much of the day), relishing the humiliation of people on TV? This isn’t Alex Keaton torturing his sister Mallory on Family Ties, although the roots of our fascination with degradation are embedded there also, however couched they may be in apparently innocuous…
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Happy Birthday, Mother India
Today India celebrates 64 years of Independence from British rule. I left the subcontinent 27 years ago—hard to believe that I’ve been away for almost half of free India. This past weekend I met a friend from Bombay (Mumbai now) whom I hadn’t seen in 28 years. We had started together as rookies in an…
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From Bombay to Bahrain to Bloomington
When I lived in Bahrain, oh, those many years ago, every Friday morning they would head out to the beach, but I was never invited. Thursday nights we roistered late, eating grilled Thai satays and all manner of Asian dishes washed down with exotic beverages. On Friday evenings we met again, they with newly-acquired tans and…
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pDaddy’s Run for Lorraine
Until you see a Marathon up close you can never really capture the full impact of this granddaddy of all running events. The Start of the race is like a jamboree—runners stretching and warming up, endless lines of people before endless lines of portable toilets, anxious faces on twitchy bodies, some fully clothed, some barely,…
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City Notes
Family Portrait Eight-year-old Ann-Marie drinks her milk. The edge of morning slices through a slat At the glasses asleep in pools of sweat. Picking her way through stubble fields Of a riotous night her day breaks Into shards of sharp memories strewn Cut, bruised, and sleeping about the flat With mum and reveling strangers and…
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I Traveled to an Ancient Land
I traveled to an ancient land, Where mountains dive into the sea. And in the black volcanic sand My startled footprints followed me Like harrying questions nipping at my heels, Springing from the ground to hound My rootlessness with furious queries. Is this for me? This land of broken promises? Not this but that I…
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Cruel April
This pitiless April morning I threw open my door And there in a collapsed heap was an exhausted traveler, Her straggly hair like struggling dandelions on her back, And limbs splayed out like denuded twigs on a bare tree. I looked and saw her still alive and asked her name, “Spring,” she whispered, “Midwestern Spring,”…
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Autumn Leaves
In the nostalgia of fall I marvel at the red and gold of gorgeous death as leaves yield the salad greenness of their youth to the decadence of nature’s inexorable cycle. Is this not the most beautiful quadrant of the year, this “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as John Keats called it? How easily…
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Winter
Snowflakes on my recoiling cheek, Like an unwanted lover’s caresses Brushed away abruptly. We’ve been together too long And I must away in search Of warm embraces. Your lips and hands blue My shivering skin, keep My bed cold, chill My tropical genes… Every time we break up, You return to seduce me With your…