Poem After Marvin Bell
        “It’s life, Marvin”

It’s life, and I’ve seen it–
        the two-year-old sucking on the ripe pear–
        the juice making tracks all the way to his elbows

It’s life when she gives it–
        the cherry popsicles to her desperately thin grandkids
        on a hot afternoon outside the Thrift Store

It’s life, and you shouldn’t see it–
        the wife of the Marine trying to shield you from seeing her black eye

It’s life, and you feel it pinch–
        when the best people you know doubt themselves

It’s life, and you hear it–
        shivering boys on the edge of becoming chattering in line for the diving board–
        cannonballs and pencil dives splashing the newly cleaned windows with freckles

It’s life, and it hurts to love it–
        when your best friend craves an affair and you love her enough
        to long for what she longs for–baseless and fleeting

It’s life, and you hear it parting–
        when your elderly friends say they can no longer cry
        at funerals which have lost their surprise

It’s life, and eventually it sprawls out behind us
        like a sheet on the line, a cape in the wind
        going wherever memory takes us
        as we sink into the Lazyboy

At My Teller Window

The smell of Flex conditioner
licks out like a tongue

The way your eyes lie
sleepy in your creases
your black velvet lashes inquire
your olive skin leads everywhere
your pale blue jeans–how they drape
and are taut

The probing tilt of your head
as your slender fingers tuck your money
and a guitar pick slips out

Prom Date

I once had a guy crazy in love with me
and I didn’t feel a thing

He wanted to be with me on the beach at dawn
so I got up a 4 am and we drove through the dark streets

We reached the beach just as the sun was coming up
and he led me to the shore and showed me the unbroken sand dollars
pushed in by the tide

My Girl

Raspberries on the ends of her fingers like thimbles
Cherries draped over her ears
Candy foil wrappers torn into tiny pieces,
tented beneath her hands, then gently blown to flurry
Honey bee petted on its furry back while engrossed in spring flowers
June bugs rescued from the pool and uprighted
Lady bugs coveted but never crushed in her curled hand
Wet fly floating in the pool delivered to the spider that lives
in the junipers