it would doubtless complain
of chronic lacksleep,
improper nutrition,
not enough veggies,
WAY too much coffee.
It would be garrulous,
expansive, skeptical,
easily shifting
from rant to praise.
If my body could talk,
it would sing elated homage
to a host of Luminous Humans,
mischievous and moody,
reflective and glad.
My body would pray,
occasionally.
It'd pick up the beads
and work its way around them
until my ticker
started to pulse
in a more temperate rhythm,
until my voice was washed clean
of every trace of snarl.

Moroccan mint tea
at the long wooden table
painted Crayola brown
outside Faro Café.

Conversation in French.

Sky-sized sheet of woolly cloud
presaging rain.

Outdoor "patio"
fenced by shrub-adjacent plants,
bonsai-like trees.

I bless the owners
for having made this spot
a chattery place of retreat,
a "laptop-free" zone!

Guttural rush of Arabic.

Tall graceful figure,
woman of forty-odd.
Cascading black hair.

I am more pervasively tired
than the high-school junior
ploughing through the bulk
of Vanity Fair
on a late summer day.

I hope I make it home before the rain.

May I rest? May I not
communicate anything
other than my need
for a cushioned windowseat 
at a Cambridge cafe,
where Gen Z baristas reign
in all their awkward splendour
and you can "pay it forward,"
you can buy a coffee or a tea
for anyone who comes in
and claims the ticket
proving your purchase
off the bulletin board?

May I bask in the darkness
of a clear August night,
of stars pulsing wordless
messages of hope light love
to wounded and weary souls
on this vulnerant planet?

May I rest in the recliner:
my place for deep breathing,
for mantric heartbeat-prayer, 
my place to be held in the arms
of some Sustainer,
some Grace more tender 
than the cool air of sunrise
on the gladioli out back?

May I know safety, shelter,
may I know the embrace
of some Power Greater,
of some Light Within.
Beyond yet near to hand.
Visible, palpable, audible,
in the voices faces bodies
of my companions
this side of the truth.

Anything could happen. Could
happen. But what is real?
What abides?

An old poem: wheelbarrow,
rainwater, chickens.

A new poem! One of Julia's,
as it happens. Earth, feet,
pen, ink, breath.

I am here for it
whatever It may be.

I am here for stuffed-plump cushions
on the windowseat of the new place,
the cool cafe on Arrow Street in Cambridge.

I am here for the tattooed goth (they/them)
who works at Andy's Diner.

I am here for that stray bit of clover
thrusting up through concrete
and adamantine politics.

I am here for the sloppy.
For the friend in tatters
who deems herself unmendable.

I am here for the gentleman 
who makes my heart swoon;
he is young and snarky,
and navigates this mess of a world
with bravery and grace.

I am here for instant coffee
strong enough to bring
stinging tears to my eyes.

I am here for you, luminous human.
You show me how it's done.

if I see Hannah next week
then the White Mountains
will reassemble themselves
from splinters and cinders

then Michelangelo's David
will sing Fauré's Crépuscule
for tourists and dignitaries

then toxic oligarchs
will sink to the bottom
of the sparkly River Charles

if I see Hannah
I shall become incarnate alleluia
hosanna from scalp to sole

hyacinths and lupine
will bloom from stubborn weeds

daffodils and peonies
will blare "Tubthumping"
every Thursday at fourteen minutes till noon

if I see Hannah
then Davis Square will kick up its panache
and Harvard Yard will be blithe and winsome

and Cambridge coffee-shops
will bandy and flaunt their non-conformable zing

I sing from southpaw hymnals.
I am corkscrew emerita.
I am coffee every which way.

I am the Queen of Something,
blessing his yellow socks,
adoring the feet inside them.

I am alternative in excelsis,
not ready for Alabama, and certainly
not holding a torch for the non-denoms.

Wear your birthday suit on Christmas Day;
See the bubbles form on crème brûlée;
Build a ziggurat with potters' clay:
        You're the one for me.

Move to Curaçao and get a tan;
Tell Dame Emma you’re her biggest fan.
Hear Bob Dylan singing (if he can!):
        You're the one for me.

When in Calgary or Californ,
Pluck a rose for me, but watch that thorn!
Heaven bless the day that you were born:
        You're the one for me.

Fill your coffee-mug with grapefruit juice;
Find a comfy chair for your caboose:
Be the E Street Band and I'll be Bruce!
        You're the one for me.

Life at the moment: a clutter
of reason and knick-knacks,
rosaries and sales-slips,
flowers dried and live,
people, churches, buses.

Page from a notebook.
Italics of the drowsy noggin.

Artist-adjacent, I sit amid
Cambridge’s cafés and taverns:
outdoor tables, luminous humans.

My eyes seek out vitality:
books and prowess,
spiked hair and piercings,
queerness and empathy.

I sip the air of this bright May
as if it were unbottled soda-water
effervescent with blossoms.

Shadows of sapling-branches
print calligraphic flourishes
upon the walls of Academia.

A passerby in sandals
makes me forget the Oxford comma,
my grocery-list, my Instagram password.

Forsythia's already greening
beyond its blithesome yellow.

A bicyclist hurricanes past.

Marathoners sleek with health
train for their races, run the Minuteman.

Sparrows bicker over crumbs
in the green insolence of spring.

Yes. I remember East Boston
The way it was when I was ten,
When Mamma Rosa stirred her sauce
Or “gravy,” as I called it then.

I still hear Logan’s jumbo-jets
Vast-wing’d and screeching overhead,
Their noise like brutal fighting words
From toughs who’d gladly see me dead.

Kushner’s had shoes. Lacy’s had sheets.
Sound Factory had 45s
From disco divas and rock bands:
“Le Freak” and “Born to Be Alive.”

And after school, I’d ride the bus
Where older kids (age twelve, thirteen)
Would taunt me till my mind drew back
From all things strident, harsh, and mean.

The sundry lusts of solitude
Rarely lead to readable poetry;
Yet, somehow, they seem to make
Fit matter for foreign films.

Alleys of longing separate
One youth from his dark goal:
Communion with electric nights,
Uncurtaining of taunting forms
Beneath diminished stars.

An acolyte of Bedlam howls
A shadow-haunted homage
To androgynous divinities:
Cinematic ice-blue faces
In the death-drunk distance.

Night. A stifled cry.

I find you in my church
but not in all churches.

I hear you whenever Lauren sings the descant
of Seek ye first.

I found you in Pride last year!
I found you in the tutu-garbed Episcopal priest
who offered a burly Boston cop some roll-on facial glitter.

Dear Peace, I'm sorry for the times when I neglect you.
You are my air, my water, my sustenance,
my chant of May all beings be blessed.

You sing in silence. You make the silence
as beautiful as any aria rendered by Devieilhe,
by the late Patricia Janečková.

You are the quiet pulse of all that lives.
I meet you whenever I bow to the light
in my divinely fashioned kindred.

You are autumn foliage setting blue-bright skies ablaze.

You are Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving at Heather's,
the Gen X gatherings that restore and refresh.

You are the blanket which Kestrel drapes over me
as I doze on the sprawling couch.

Dear Peace, I have to say:
I like your Converse high-tops,
your Goth-girl insouciance, the fishnet sleeves
on your jet-black blouse.

I like riding the Red Line with you to Quincy
and seeing you read a real book.

I like your careful sonnets
even though your meter stumbles at times,
and the rhyme seems somewhat wonky.

Dear Peace, I loved our chat on the 77
at ten the other night when you and I
harboured and havened each other
for several minutes as our bus rolled
with bumpy determination toward Arlington Center.

Dear Peace, I see you in cheeky banners,
in rambunctious rallies
against the ugliness of destructive statecraft.

I see you, Peace, in Francis of blessed memory;
I see you in Leo, his successor.

I feel you, Peace, when Aviva Chernick sings,
when a congregation chants in reverent unison
the sacred words of the shehecheyanu.

I see you in all those souls who mellow themselves enough
to be at home in their own imperfection,
in all those hearts who are brave enough
to strive to be better without self-shame.

Dear peace, you are a male Mary of Bethany
at the feet of a female Jesus.

You are votive candle.
You are Rothko chapel.
You are hijab of intricate floral pattern.

You are Thirst and Evidence and Rules for the Dance.

Dear peace, I hear your honeyed voice
saying, Sweetie, I got you.

Breathing at fifty-six,
yes, next right thing.

Heart flutters,
fibrillates and sinks,
is weighted down,
bruised with worry.

Things done, undone.

I get up at two
because my body
has forgotten how to sleep.

I drink water.
Coffee. Poems.
Breathe and pace,
breathe and pace.
Talk to myself
and to whatever angel
might be eavesdropping.

Coax myself deskward.

Friend in Orlando
doesn't object
when I write to him
at oh-dark-thirty
to unburden,
or to frolic in word-gardens,
scamper among
a pan-angelicum of phonemes, 
a choir sublime
of sweet voices and sounds.

Rosamística the Lyft driver tells me she's
fifty-one, and from Paraguay. She has
some distance to go until she's fluent

in her adopted English, but smiling, she
tells me, "Yo soy rooner," and I don't
understand until she indicates a man

jogging up the road beside the snowbanks.
"Oh, wow! A runner! Diez quilometros?"
I ask. "Si! Si! Half mah-rah-tone!"

And she shows off her silver thermos
with the yellow-and-blue unicorn decal
of the Boston Athletic Association.

"Marzo, Nueva York! Half mah-rah-tone!"
"Buena suerte!" I venture, barely confident
in this much Spanish. Rosamística reaches:

"I ... train? But esa semana, mucho frio!"
She laughs. I nod, and say yes, and laugh.
We meet between each other's limitations,

and we enjoy a happy conversation.

Andy's was crazy-crowded,
absolutely packed on a Sunday
just after twelve noon. Clumps
of hungry folks in jackets
stood waiting for a booth.
A man was seated at the counter,
third seat from the leftward end.
White-haired fellow, cheerful,
Napoleonic curls fringing his brow.
Eighty, maybe. Eighty-five.

Someone had written out
in cautious majuscules
a list of breakfast items
on a pale blue post-it note,
which the man held in a hand
that he willed to be steady.
He read from the list, as Mikayla
leaned in with pen and pad:
bacon, extra "krispy";
two poached eggs, runny;
hot coffee, cream and sugar.
At the bottom of this list
in the same deliberate capitals,
a first name, George, a last name,
and a phone number.

George was more than a little blurry,
perceptibly afflicted in the manner
common to those who've seen
so many decades come and go.
But George was radiating joy,
completely incandescent.

Mikayla had handed him
three or four plastic tubs
sealed in glittery cellophane,
each tub scarcely bigger
than a Forever stamp,
and housing a dollop
of Smucker's strawberry jam.
"I love this stuff! Don't you?"
The younger man to his left
oh-yeah’d agreement.
George kept rhapsodizing:
"God, I love this stuff!"

He was able to peel off the seal
and butterknife the reddish goo
onto his bread, this ancient human
looking for all the world
like a bright-cheeked nine-year-old
whose team had just won trophies
in small-town Little League.

I remember the old
windowless barbershop
of wood-panelled walls
in Maverick Square
where Bob the barber
gave basic haircuts
for maybe twelve bucks.
Dozens of back issues
of Sports Illustrated
sat in baskets
or on small tables
near the chairs
where customers
waited their turn.
It was the 1970s,
Ford and Carter.
I was not yet ten.
My hair was thin
and fiercely straight:
unstylish, an inverted
bowl atop my noggin,
graceless and dorky.
Bob was kindly,
curly-haired, bearded,
like the mellow TV painter
later to be seen on PBS,
and was undaunted
by the stiff task
of making me look spiffy.