Missing What Isn’t Even Gone  

The brilliant blue shirt, color 

of the deepest heavens and your eyes,

the one you wore yesterday, slumps

on the mound in the laundry basket.

Your glasses still hug your head over your ears,

the lenses’ weight teasing them slowly

down the bridge of your nose,

which sometimes whistles when you breathe. 

You are still reading the book

about the mysteries of black holes,

and a murder mystery set in lower Quebec,

still puzzling over word games with morning coffee.

But right now, we meet on a paved path 

winding between hayfields full of sparrows

and patches of hardwoods dropping sunset-dyed leaves.

You tell me how a red pickup truck

cut in front of you on the way here,

how you cursed the idiot, how you don’t get

what’s wrong with people today, the jerks.

Then we are silent. Walking, our steps in sync. 

Your three-year old grandson goes home tomorrow.

You are exhausted but will miss him.

You’re already thinking of a winter trip

to Florida to visit him. I’m thinking

I will miss you for the time you’re gone.

That’s months away.  I think,

how can we miss what isn’t even gone yet?

This longing for what is still here,

it’s deep, like the pool 

where the northern lights,

dripping from the Big Dipper,

ripple, then disappear.

“Missing What Isn’t Even Gone.” 2025 Allen Ginsberg Awards Honorable Mention. Forthcoming in Paterson Literary Review 2026.

Allen Ginsberg Awards reading, Paterson Poetry Center, Paterson, NJ, February 7, 2026. Photo by Anne Sandor.

The Coming of the Crows

Like polished black stones tossed by the bucketful,

crows scatter by the hundreds across fields and yards,

raid birdfeeders, dumpsters,

at night roost in trees overhanging neighborhoods,

those glassy black eyes catching a glint of errant light,

bodies matching the utter darkness of moonless sky.

Hearing their harsh curses

as they harangue the red-tailed hawk,

or each other,

or the raucous blue jays angry at the raiding

of their black sunflower seeds,

or not hearing them, low gliding

a few at a time before they all rise

and fly a black-curtain storm cloud

across a cold windy sky,

how can we not think of omens,

the long icy nights, dream-thoughts

spewing dark smoke skyward?

How, as we shiver, can we not ask for mercy,

for these murders to disperse?                                                                  

“The Coming of the Crows.” The Orchards Poetry Journal (Winter 2023).