As Poe later explained in The Philosophy of Composition, his explicit intention was "to create a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste." —Prof. Nathan Dale, Poe: A Life Apart

"Professor Dale?"

The bespectacled, gray-haired gentleman peered up from his volume of Homer, blinking at the young woman addressing him. She looked for a moment like Helen of Troy.

Professor Dale shook off that unbidden impression and got to his feet.

"That's me, yes."

"Follow me please. Mr. Pilszki has asked me to take you to the Casablanca Suite."
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"This new guy we hired, he really bugs me," Alicia said to her husband at breakfast.

Ralph looked up from his newspaper and turned down the volume of Morning Edition on the radio. "What?"

"This new guy, Tom. He's driving me nuts."

"How so?" Ralph sipped his coffee, wiped his mustache with a forefinger.

"He's so, I don't know, military. He's retired Air Force, you know. It's like he wants orders. 'What's the priority?' he says when I give him some things to do. What do I know the priority is? Just do them."
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Rain machine-gunned the side of the barn; the trees swayed violently as the storm blew in. Lightning flashed. Thunder growled. Raising his head in the building wind, Sam leaned upon the shovel. This is the way the weather should be, he thought, when you were burying a loved one. Postcard-perfect days were for baseball games and parades. Weddings, too. He sighed; the sky had been crystal blue the day he had buried his parents.

He resumed digging. For sixteen years Chancellor had been his faithful companion. But the inexorable march of time had worn her down until one day he realized she was old. Walking had become an effort; chasing rubber balls a memory. On pleasant days he would carry her to the vineyard and sit her in the shade beneath the vines; when it was hot he left her sleeping on the bed in an air-conditioned room.
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On her ninety-fourth birthday, her ninth as a widow, Essie Lester was taken to her favorite Boston steakhouse, Fallon's, where she put away a twelve-ounce prime filet and mounds of garlic-mashed potatoes and creamed spinach. Eating on one side of her was her son, George, and on the other his wife, Marlene, who spent much of the dinner talking about the low-carb diet they had gone on to prepare for their anniversary odyssey to the tropics, the Big Thirtieth. They picked at their pale tilapia and exchanged eye-rolling glances, showboating for the waiter and busboy their envious pride in Essie's fabled genes. After dessert (death-by-chocolate cake for Essie and black decaf for George and Marlene), Essie spent an inordinate amount of time in the vault-like, walnut-paneled alcove which the restaurant touts as its "gallery" of vintage sports photographs, four walls crammed with old glossies of bygone local jocks, famous and obscure. Then the steakhouse valet brought around the car and George began driving them back to Essie's apartment house, a building for elders who could still take care of themselves. This meant no doctors, no nurses, just individual studio units, a dining hall, and an activities director for the bored and bingo-obsessed.
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The Pre-match Hype:

Late Sunday afternoon and evening in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts, was the busiest time at Rudy's La Famiglia Trattoria. We did a great business on Saturday night, but it was a madhouse after 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. Rudy even brought in his octogenarian father, Paulo, to toss pizzas, which helped him and Marco stem the hungry tide. I could have used an extra hand on the grill, but the kitchen space was so small that we'd probably have ended up tripping over one another.

Most of our menu was picked up at the counter, which saved on the need for wait staff; but Rudy always added a high school kid for drink refills and to bus the tables. Brenda, as usual, worked the register. God forbid she should leave her post to do anything that might damage the manicure that often featured the red, white and green of the Italian flag. Since she was Irish, this was more to suck up to Rudy than to display a national allegiance.
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November 2001

Trailers

The name sign on the trailer must have fallen off — I don't remember seeing it in the last couple of years. The mailbox on the opposite side of the road still says, faintly, "D. Heard," or perhaps "Hoard." We've never seen anyone there in seven years, although I seem to remember, when we first came walking, an old car parked most days on the grass. A little picture would come into my head, a grizzled man, old, in bib overalls, listening to local radio at his kitchen table, but it was quickly dismissed as soon as we turned the corner and saw the ocean below. Same for another trailer just up the road, this one with lovely flower beds that changed with the seasons, and lacy curtains, and my fleeting image was a widow in skirt and stockings and reading glasses and several grandchildren that visited on certain Sundays, again brutally disremembered, until the next time we walked.
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Rush Hour, Chicago

Early evening traffic
rather heavy.
Autos armadillo home
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I have been too busy

the last two years to talk

to anyone in the office.
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The sky is smooth as blue marble.
White sand and small rocks
dig into our knees, our backs and hips.
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Yankee hardpan, stone
two feet deep in places, and
where's the soft spot
in between, the giving soil
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Lamps unsure if they've longer to wait
before darkness completes itself
and I unsure if their volleys
of flickering and hesitation
is the sought sign — when to know
if I'm ready to leave?
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There was a moment
human hands taught it fiery touch.
A moment of light.
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