The emptiness between Hemingway’s words is a

  hollow sound that stays in your mind

 

The space creates distance as the Old Man wanted,

  from the reader and the voyeur of pain

 

“Distance from the day he fought and struggled

   to land that one great fish

 

“Distance from a soldier’s final battle, calling out

   from beyond his reach

 

“Distance from the arena where the horns got close,

   with death again denied

 

“And distance from the many women he tried to

   desperately love and failed”

 

Each city his refuge: Paris, Havana, and Ketchum,

  but in no place were his memories home

 

And giving in to the distance, setting the ghost free

   —his bell tolled one last time

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

Raw

Intelligence…

Like dry

Cement

Sitting unmixed

Never used

To make

Anything

Real

 

Raw

Intelligence…

A flashing

Neon light

To its own

Potential

Bulbs

Burning out

One at a time

 

Raw

Intelligence…

Its shadows

Forever littered

Along a

Lost and

Forgotten

Past tense

Alleyway

 

Raw

Intelligence…

Like shards of

Glass

In the maelstrom

Reflecting a story

Of what

Might

Have been

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

 

How old where you

  when you were born

 

Were your pasts or futures

 deemed forlorn

 

How young will you be

 when you die

 

As truth cries inward

 —all time a lie

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

Surging through memory,

 all time was expanded

 

The past and the future

 —beginning and end

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

After the finish line,

 a new starting line awaits

 

Where answers have deserted,

 but old questions remain

 

The learning curve most steep,

 as doubt invades the shadows

 

The light never brighter

 —than when dawn breaks through again

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

It can take a lifetime…

 to learn how to write like yourself

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

I can’t give it to you scientifically,

 and that’s the only way you want it

 

Therefore, the enormous part of you

  that’s missing

    —will stay forever gone

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

       ‘To My Naturalist Friends’

Quantum Superposition,

 forever preying on our minds

 

Refusing to admit what consciousness knows,

 its theory never finds

 

The more complex the argument,

 the further afield it falls

 

Roaming and scattered amidst the trees,

 blind to the forests call

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

Planting words inside my garden,

 watering them at will

 

 

Staking memories long forgotten,

 feelings cold and shrill

 

Row by row the letters planted,

  phrases start to grow

 

Whose cool fall day a harvest brings

 —to feed the winter snows

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

What describes a Poet,

 let me count the ways

 

To once describe a morning,

 emerging through the haze

 

What describes a season,

 its leaves from green to brown

 

What describes a heartbeat,

 when your lover can’t be found

 

What describes a reason,

 with excuses cast away

 

What describes a child’s laugh,

 joyous on display

 

What describes a place called home,

 to a soldier sent to war

 

And what describes that final breath

 —to an old man wanting more

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)