contents

Chaos 3 Frivolity 5 Water Music 6 Thou 9 How I Came to Meet the Fates 10 Beachcomber 12 By My Faith 12 Lear’s Wife 14 For Malachai, Five Days Old 15 Second Look 17 I ’m Sorr y 17 A True Berlin Short Story 18 In the Swim 19 What’s Left 21 That’s That and Not That 22 Get Out 25 For W.S. Merwin 26 Pub Crawl 27 Wandering 29 Easy Does It 30 Spit Tune 32 Just Born 34 The Poem of Self 34 Happiness 37 Good Morning 38 Parable of the Porcupine 41 March 21, First Day of Spring 41 Street Music 42 The Long and Short Of It 45 Letter to the Butterlies 48 Pocket Mirror 49 The Blanket 50 Who Am I to Say? 51 Scars, Moon, And Old Stories 52 Lenin, Gorky and I 53 ‘Because the Cooking from Next Door Said Fish and Cabbage’ – M.S. 54 January 2nd, 2018 56 Ode to Stella Halkyard, Rylands Librarian – Soon to Retire 57 Cosmic Valentine 59