Bookstore

I want a bookstore

cat, but I already have

three cats too many.

Commonwealth Books, 9 Spring Street, Boston. Go there if you find yourself in Boston.

Ours is a Love Story for the 3rd of July.

Bottle rockets burst a few blocks away,

then overhead. Our cats sleep uneasy,

ears shifting quick at each explosion.

It's awfully cool for the 3rd of July, 

I think, as a northwind blows across

sunset, into the front window.

My wife is in the next room.

Her fingers pound the computer 

keyboard like a fistfight.

I think about the day we met,

more than a decade ago

to the day. We were children

going out for a movie and 

some drinks. Perhaps, I will look back 

in a dozen years or so

at your attacks on the machine,

audible for miles around,

and think the same thing.

We were children then,

I'll say, as I sat and listened to you

beat hell out of your laptop.

Another blast startles a cat.

I consider how much your typing

sounds like a lit brick of firecrackers.

Drunk in the Afternoon

I sat on the lawn,

barefoot in sunshine.

My white cat visited

for a moment, then went

to eat a half dozen leaves

from the catnip plant

before passing out

underneath our car.

I nodded knowingly, then 

got up to head inside,

leaving him to enjoy

his afternoon inebriation.

An Olfactory Analysis.

In the hotel hall

a boy says, "smells like someone's

got a pet skunk."

Fog & Mist on the Pennsylvania Turnpike

a morning on which

mist obscured the interstate,

I lost my focus.

A Fenway Haiku

Yes, a fistfight five

feet from Pesky's Pole. Did he

root against the Sox?

This Braves fan didn't resort to fisticuffs. It happened later in the game when the beer count, and tempers, ran high.

However, the insects. (or Misery Loves Company)

Every morning that week in June

we woke to puddles, fog, and that

strange air that is somehow cool,

but then warm at the same time,

so, you find yourself wondering

if it's the air or you've succumbed 

to some feverish delirium.

We had an idea we weren't all sick,

and knew the rain was always going to be 

good for the garden. However, the insects

became a monstrance, plague-like, 

but at least they gave the neighbors

something to complain about

that wasn't one another.