Poetry

WHAT AMERICAN IS, WHEN WE REMEMBER (Super Bowl XL – Bad Bunny)

America is not a gate.
It is a field—
wide enough for sugarcane to grow
where yard lines once pretended to be borders.
It is a song that refuses translation
because it does not ask permission to exist.
A mother tongue lifted into floodlights,
each syllable a hand reaching forward
instead of a fist held tight.
America is a child
looking up at someone who looks like him,
not because fame matters,
but because possibility does.
Because belief still survives
in the small, unguarded places.
It is a blessing spoken outward,
never hoarded.
A roll call of neighbors,
names said slowly, lovingly,
as if geography itself were a family album
creased by use,
kept close to the heart.
America is flags moving together,
cloth breathing in unison,
not competing for air.
It is color without apology.
It is history that did not arrive quietly
and never will.
America is the courage to stand joyful
while someone else calls joy a threat.
It is love so visible
that hate reveals its true size—
small, brittle, afraid of music.
It is not purity.
It is not silence.
It is not fear dressed up as tradition.
It is not the narrowing of the world
to fit a frightened man’s vocabulary.
America is a place where language becomes rhythm,
where culture is shared like food,
passed hand to hand,
where no one asks you to erase yourself
to be welcomed.
It is the understanding that belonging
is not something you win
by excluding others,
but something you deepen
by making room.
America is a homeland that says,
We are still here,
not as defiance,
but as devotion.
And when the world is watching,
America—at its best—
chooses to answer cruelty
with celebration,
division with invitation,
and hate
with a love so expansive
it cannot be shouted down.
This is the America worth handing to our children—
not wrapped,
not polished,
but alive,
singing in every language it has ever known,
standing together in the open,
unafraid of itself.

Fifty-Five: A Reunion in Real Time (10/17/29 – West Warwick Wizards ’70)

No theme this year—
no paper streamers or borrowed disco balls.
Just the quiet arrival of time,
and all of us,
on time.
More or less.

The name tags are helpful,
but unnecessary.
We know each other
in the way only a certain kind of past allows—
not the facts,
but the essence.
A smile still tilts the same.
A pause still says everything.

We orbit the same stories
with new grace—
less interested in impressing,
more intrigued by remembering.
Not every memory made it,
but the ones that did
have earned the right to be told again.

No one needs to prove a thing.
We’ve all built, lost, learned, changed—
not once,
but many times.
It turns out high school
was just the prologue
and not even the juiciest part.

This isn’t a ceremony,
and it’s not nostalgia.
It’s something better:
a rare moment of agreement
that what we shared still matters,
even if we all remember it
a little differently.

There is elegance in showing up.
There is wit in not pretending.
There is something quietly spectacular
about being in a room
with people who once knew
the earliest versions of you—
and decided to come back anyway.

Here’s to that.
To us.
To now.

Minnesota: Where Prayers Could Not Save Them

Minnesota: Where Prayers Could Not Save Them

There were prayers still hanging in the air
when the sound broke through the hymn—
metal splitting silence,
bodies folding like fragile paper
in a place meant to hold them safe.

Another church.
Another town whose name
we will remember
only because of the blood on its floor.

Somewhere,
in the dim rooms of Washington,
they sit with folded hands,
offering thoughts,
sending prayers
like flowers tossed into a river
while the current drags us under.

The children are gone.
The mothers,
the fathers,
the soft elders who built these walls
now lie in the quiet the gunman left behind.

And still,
nothing.

Nothing
but the sound of lobbyists
counting their victories,
nothing but the rustle of checks
signed in back rooms,
nothing but the silence of a government
that looks away
because power has its price
and our dead
cannot afford the bid.

We were promised sanctuary.
Instead,
we have built an altar
to the weapon,
kneeling before it
while our children are buried beneath it.

How many more?
How many hymns must end mid-breath
before the halls of power
hear the echoes
screaming through the pews?

The candles still burn tonight.
The names will be read tomorrow.
And somewhere,
someone is already
loading the next round.

To The Ones Who Make The Room Glow

Volunteer Appreciation Celebration – The Arctic Playhouse – July 18, 2025 

You arrive before the music, before the first note is coaxed 
from the keys, before the hush of anticipation settles in the air.
You are already there—with table lights warmed just right,
with places set like quiet invitations, with the kind of presence
that makes strangers feel like they’ve come home. 

You do not ask for applause, yet you shape the stage in ways no  
spotlight could ever capture. The ambiance breathes because of you—
soft and certain, like a memory we didn’t know we were missing
until we stepped through the door. 

Your welcome is not loud, but it is unwavering. It lives in every
poured glass, every offered chair, every thoughtful gesture that
says: “You matter here. We see you. Stay awhile.”

And so, when the music begins—when voices rise and hearts
unfold in songs and stories—know this: what the audience hears
is only part of the performance. The rest of it—the warmth,
the ease, the joy that lingers like candlelight—is your inspiration.

Finally, when the night closes—when sound of the The Rainbow 
Connection begins and you all join in, binding every heart in 
the room with its quiet truth—it is your kindness that makes
the moment feel less like an ending and more like a promise.
A promise we’ll find each other again, under these lights,
held by this music, in the intimacy you so effortlessly create. 

You are the ones who give more than time. You give care.
You give soul. You give The Cabaret Club the magic of being
more than a room. Thank you for making this place not just
somewhere we come to listen, but somewhere we come to
feel known.

Ode to the Stage Manager, Vicki Yates – The Arctic Playhouse, West Warwick, RI

She enters the theater before it can yawn,
 With coffee in hand and the ghost light still on.
 While actors are stretching or lost in a line,
 She’s taping the stage with a grid so divine.

She wrangles the chaos with headset and charm,
 Says, “Places!” and suddenly—calm.
 She knows every line, every glitch, every cue,
 And the prop you forgot way back in Act 2.

She speaks fluent panic, and patience as well,
 Can call cues in blackout or handle a yell.
 If the set starts to crumble or someone forgets,
 She patches it up with dry wit and no sweat.

Her script is a journal, a map, a memoir,
 With scribbles and notes like theatrical war.
 She’s the first one to laugh, the last one to leave,
 The magician who ensures the audience believes.

No spotlight will catch her, with no curtain bow,
 But everyone knows she’s the queen of the now.
 For the cast and the crew, she’s the heart and the glue,
 And the show goes on nightly thanks to what she can do.

For the Hands That Sing

On the 65th Birthday of Jim Rice –  Beloved Friend and Maestro 7/11/25

Today, the keys pause for a moment— mid-phrase, mid-feeling—
to tip their hats to the hands that guide them. Today, the
spotlight bends not toward center stage, but to the soul in
the shadows, who lifts every note like a prayer.

You, Jim, the quiet architect of song, the steady breath
beneath the singer’s storm, have given your heart to
hundreds of voices— and in return, we give you ours.

At Club Café, where laughter lingers in chords, and in
The Cabaret Club, at The Arctic Playhouse where warmth
meets your artistic wisdom, you are the spine of every
ballad, the unseen pulse of every encore.

We have watched your fingers teach courage, watched them
sculpt self-doubt into composure. You have accompanied more
than melodies—you have accompanied us, through tears and triumph,
with grace that never asks to be named.

Kindness is your key signature, generosity your tempo. And in a
world too often off-pitch, your presence keeps us in tune.

So on this day—your day, Jim— we celebrate not just your talent,
but your spirit, which plays in us long after the final note fades.

Happy Birthday, Dear Friend. You are the heartbeat of every 
performance. You are the thread that weaves the music into magic.

 

Happy Beltane 2025

“Beltane Morning”
Mist drapes the hills like a forgotten veil,
and the first birds speak in soft, urgent syllables.
The air tastes of green things returning—
not just grass, but the memory of growth,
the promise of ripening.
At the forest’s edge, a fire waits to be born.
It remembers the hands that struck the flint,
the breath that urged it into being.
Women braid flowers into their hair,
not for beauty,
but for invocation—
as if petals could persuade the gods
to linger a little longer.
The men gather wood
not with silence,
but with laughter sharp as flint,
as if joy itself is kindling.
Somewhere, a drum begins—
steady, low,
older than language.
It calls to something beneath the skin,
something that once walked barefoot through dew
and knew the name of every bird
by the rhythm of its wings.
Beltane is not a date.
It is the body’s remembering—
of light before harvest,
of fire before shadow,
of touch before reason.
And in the darkening grass,
two figures step through the smoke
as if walking into a story
that has waited
a thousand years to be told again.

THE ZIPPER THAT ZAPPED ME

I once had a zipper, a zip-zappy zapper,
It zipped with a ZZZ like a zip-happy clapper.
It lived on my jacket, all shiny and snappy,
But boy, when it’s moody, it’s not very happy.
It zipped up with glee on a Tuesday at two,
Then stopped with a GLUNK! and refused to go through!
It wiggled, it jiggled, it jammed in a loop,
It gobbled my hoodie into a tight swoop!
I tugged it, I begged it, I gave it a pep—
It burped and it squeaked and it nibbled my step.
It sucked in my scarf and it nipped at my chin,
Then laughed a small laugh from its zippery grin.
It zipped itself backward, it zipped in a curl,
It zipped in a circle and tried to unfurl!
Then WHAM! in a moment, it zipped up my cat—
Poor Mr. McWhiskers got zipped in a hat!
“Now listen here, Zipper!” I gave it a glare,
“You’ve zipped half the hallway, the rugs, and my chair!
You zip without manners, you zip without care!
I’d send you to jail if I just had a spare!”
But Zippers, you see, are a strange little crew—
They’ll zip what they want and they’ll zip what they do.
You think that you wear them, but oh, it’s a trick—
The zipper’s the boss! And it zips you up quick.
So now I wear buttons. They’re slower, it’s true.
They don’t zip my cat or my sandwich or shoe.
They’re calm, they’re polite, and they won’t cause a scene…
Except when they pop off and bounce off my screen.
NATIONAL ZIPPER DAY – 4/29