Tuesday Poem: previously published by Fox Chase Review in 2010

                                                                    Ghost Flock by Alasdair Wallace

Heart of Washington Square 

When the birds fall

out of the trees behind you,

light as a cloud, when they lift in an arc,

wheel and bank right over the man you love,

as he stubbornly sits on a bench in the sun,

reading his book, while you hunch on another one

in the shade, preferring to take

the dimmer view, until those tiny wings

take flight, and your spirits rise up when they do,

as you will soon, conceding to a clearly cosmic

connection, the sparrows, their sheer velocity,

like Cupid’s arrows shot between you,

affirming that incongruous as the two of you

may be: red dwarf, white giant, ashiver, ablaze,

written by light, gently bathed in ink,

you’re part  of the same constellation, linked.

Tuesday Poem: Published in The Passaic County Community College Anthology in 1989

Black Dress Poem

  Isn't it a bitter thing to think of him floating that way...

  and no one to keen him but the black hags that do be flying

  on the sea.                         

                                                J. M. Synge

                                               Riders To The Sea

Daddy, I used to smell your T-shirts

lying so white in the drawer,

as I put the laundry away,

long thoughtful breaths,

leafing nervously

through the old photographs,

you kept hidden under the socks,

looking for clues.

It was my secret ritual,

leaning against the foot board

of the pineapple-poster marriage bed

that had always been too small for you.

Pictures of you as a young Marine

in bar after bar surrounded by friends,

their faces so many smiling moons

held close by your gravity, some Rita

Hayworth woman on your arm.

The eight by ten

Mommy talked about

through gritted teeth:

Lola with the long red nails

who was crazy for you

but wouldn't have suited the family.

My father the Admiral's Orderly,

with a mustache and a forty five,

dressed in your battle tuxedo:

an open pack of Camels

your boutonniere.

It would have been impossible then

to imagine that you stood

on the rim of a bottomless well

that would eventually swallow you,

or that your children would have to turn

their backs on you to save themselves.

Daddy, all the years you kept from sinking,

by pouring a sea of beer down your throat,

I searched for you everywhere,

despite the shadows. I want to tell you,

I saw you, I saw you, even though

a curtain hung between us:
too heavy for me to lift.