TOMES AND DUCKS

I recall your study,

the antique English writing table

and collection of ducks

adorning shelves of daunting books.

A thick volume,

the biography of Nicholas II,

accompanied you to the hospital that year.

Back and forth it rode

in the hastily-packed valise,

with your address book

and striped cotton pajamas.

Stopping in,

we found you reading,

your travel companion

resting heavily

on your gown-draped chest.

Squinting, you looked up

and smiled when you saw us.

In your last,

monitored,

breath-struggled moments,

we held your hands,

and let you go.

The Tsar

aslant an icy metal table

bore witness.

Later, dazed,

with you present yet gone,

we tossed everything:

prescription bottles, leather slippers

and your well-traveled tome

into the trash.

At home

your bed waited;

beside it,

on the nightstand,

a stack of hardcover books.

--Finalist 2015 James Applewhite Poetry Prize, NC Literary Review, no. 25, 2016

FRENCH PRESS

My sister sings show tunes

in her shower overlooking the river.

Healer of others, she must pause

to mend a near-blinding retinal tear.

Her soprano notes manifest

the joy coursing water brings.

Humming, she enters her kitchen, head atilt,

and watches me make us breakfast.

She teaches me to use a French Press,

and I remember following her, squeezing

through sweaty bodies and acrid haze to the stage,

when she spirited me to my first concert years earlier.

Today, in flowing top and yoga pants,

she sits on the banquette brushing Socrates,

her ancient orange tabby, chiding him in baby talk

as he meows and purrs and bunts against her.

She spritzes him with scented oils,

gives both of us hits as well.

We add frothy milk and coarse brown sugar

to warm mugs of freshly roasted coffee,

interpret the past and divine the future

in this new season without parents

and separated from children

as the virus resurges around us.

--Displayed at Artspace “In Kind” exhibit, Winter 2025

--Staff Favorite, 2025 Carolina Woman Writing Contest