It tipped in the frost that came too soon, before the crocuses and bees could warn it, before anyone thought to bring things in — a casualty of optimism, of March wind forgetting itself.

Now it lies in the wet grass on its side, one arm almost pointing at the April sky like a reluctant question no one’s thought to ask.

The stripes are still there — green and white, green and white — faded to the color of something that used to be. Gray. The woven plastic has learned the shape of the ground.

It doesn’t know its aluminum bones have been forgotten. It only knows the cold got longer after the warmth, that no one came back, to that yard, grown a little around it, the way a stream bends around a stone and keeps going, or grass that keeps growing.

Somewhere it remembers the weight of a body in August. The way a back leaned into it. The sweat of a cold beer on the armrest. A trashy paperback left face-down. The particular pleasure of doing a whole lot of nothing in the sun.

But that was a differen…

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When I was a child, no one told me that the earth turned a complete revolution to make one day, that a day is twenty four hours, and that twelve is half of that.

A small thing. But without it, the clock face was just symbols — arbitrary, disconnected, something to memorize rather than understand. I wasn’t slow. I wasn’t difficult. I needed the whole picture before the pieces could make sense.

I didn’t get it.

Most of us have a version of this story. A moment when we needed one more layer of context, one person to see how we were thinking and meet us there. Some of us were lucky enough to get it. Many of us weren’t.

What follows is a pair of short pieces about a classroom, a teacher, and the space between what children need and what adults are able to give.

But mostly they are about what it feels like to be a child waiting for something you don’t yet have words for.

You’ll recognize the room. You may recognize the child.

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The old proverb marks it a circle of shame —

the mind’s loop, tripping over the same dark stone, calling it folly, calling it small.

But consider the scavenger who knows no pride, only the hollow ache of her ribcage, the body’s blunt arithmetic.

To her, it is not vomit — it is salt and protein pulled from the edge of death, a resource the fastidious leave to rot in the dirt.

She does not weigh the optics, only the heat in her blood, the distance still ahead.

Perhaps the real fool is not the one who circles back, but the one who walks away clean, who mistakes revulsion for wisdom and abandons the marrow still locked in the bone —

who never learns to hold bitterness long enough

in the dark

until it turns,

finally, to fuel.

The slab was three feet by eight feet. Bare concrete, overlooking a shallow valley of Pittsburgh trees that didn’t know they were part of a “suburban ghetto.” We sat there in those trashy aluminum lawn chairs—the kind with the green and white plastic webbing that bites into the back of your thighs—sipping Moosehead and watching the water vapor drift toward the Monongahela.

The Youghiogheny was just down the hill. The Lenape called it the “contrary’” river because it flows north, defying the easy gravity of the map. Andy was like that.

Andy’s mind was a high-frequency hum. He did PhD-level calculus for fun and taught himself Russian because the English alphabet was too small to hold him. But then the “contrary” current would catch him. He’d buy a car on a Tuesday and abandon it on a curb by Wednesday, a twenty-thousand-dollar glitch in a brain that could map the stars.

I was the opposite. I’d spend forty minutes sweating over which shirt to wear, paralyzed by the smallest friction, while Andy watched his life’s car disappear into the weeds without a blink.

He hated the “automated” life. But it was a way to survive more on his own. He put himself in a greenhouse once—a glass cage where his only job was to watch gauges and pour chemical salts into the water. It was a job for a machine, given to a man whose IQ made the walls feel like they were closing in. He’d take himself off disability, proud and upright, until the boredom turned into a tailspin. Then it was back to Western Psych, back to the “prescription adjustments,” back to being treated like a broken calculator by a system that couldn’t make heads or tails of his Russian poetry.

We shared a birthday, but we shared more in the silence of those lawn chairs. We were just two amorphous clouds, a cirrus and a nimbus, sharing a patch of the same sky.

The last time, he didn’t want to go out for our birthday. That was the “irrational signal.”

He didn’t call me because he knew I’d try to talk him out of the friction. He was always polite, even at the end. He sealed the windows and the doors with duct tape—silver, industrial, permanent. He taped signs on the walls, warning the first responders about the carbon monoxide. Even as he was setting up the small hibachi in the bathroom for his final, private cookout, he was worried about the lungs of the strangers who would find him.

The “Expert” in me—the one who went back to school to study the maps of the mind—wants to say I should have helped. I should have known. The Expert wants to use words like “bipolar” or “aneurism” to make it make sense. Coherent.

But the Bear in me knows better. The Bear knows that some rivers just flow north.

There’s no end to learning about clouds. You watch them form, you watch them hold their shape for a moment above the valley, and then you watch them dissolve into the blue. You don’t “fix” a cloud. You witness it.

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During the early months
of the pandemic
when the air itself felt uncertain,

I found myself holding
my father’s gold tie clip

with a diamond chip
set in onyx.

Not studying it.
Not remembering anything in particular.

Just closing my fist
around

a small piece
of leaden ballast.

Metal against my palm.

For a few moments
the strange drifting feeling
that had taken hold of the world

settled.

And I felt something simple:

sometimes what steadies us
is not an idea
or an explanation

but the silent weight
of something
that once belonged
to someone who
was there for us.

Sadly, I wore his clip
only to lose it somewhere

between work & home
& lose that
ballast again.

in my dream

the poets have

taken over

& aligned

themselves

on a page

a scrimmage of

warrior athletes

using kitchen shears

they cut up

worn out

black T-shirts

into 3-inch

squares

⬛ ⬛ ⬛

breaking through

defenses deep

into the endzone

of my thoughts

then madly dancing

in victory

Death camps

In the USA

Could B U
Could

B Me

We Seek

Hope
& Dignity

A Border Wall?

A Prison Gate?

Migrants
Make America

Great

Due Process

4

Migrants

Just Obeying

Orders

Agents Say

ICE Just Takes

Their Rights

Away

Due Process

4

Migrants

They Flee

War &

Bitter Strife

Only Want

2 Build

A Life

Van Pulls Up

U

Disappear

No 1 Charged

Just Ruled

By Fear

Zip tied hands

Unmarked

Vans

Just Like Scenes

From

Nazi Lands

Without Badges

& Masked Faces

ICE Will Come

2 Raid Our Places

They Have

No Rights &

Have No Say

We Have

Death Camps

In The

USA

Hey Doc, I sit here

On the doorstep of my soul,

Pen in hand, wantin’ to feel whole.

Drowning

in the rain of my own thoughts drippin’,

Like a Dali painting, thought I was trippin’,

Tumbling, falling, barking like a seal.

You ask, "How do you feel?"

Hopin', I suppose, for something real.

How do I feel?

Just a leaf in the chaos, blowing free.

This old world's just too much for me.

Politics so insane, a constant, stupid mindless refrain,

I'm a butterfly in a hurricane,

trying to maintain.

A Chihuahua to your Great Dane,

yapping at your heel...

You wanna know how I really feel?

Got a rainy day feeling in your head?

Wishin’ you could just stay in bed?

Don't you worry & hold your sighs,

I know a place that’ll brighten your skies.

Around a Pittsburgh corner

Where a neon light glows

There's a cute little shop

Everyone knows!

It's Sam's Umbrellas, doors open wide!

Come in from the storm where you can hide

It's plain to see, Sam's a swell fella,

Happy as can be at Sam's Umbrellas!

Got every color, every size to pick,

From a tiny parasol

to a fancy walking stick.

Red polka dots & stripes of blue,

Umbrellas for me & for you.

Sam greets you with a friendly grin,

& tells a funny joke as you walk in.

No rush, no fuss, just a helpful hand,

Best umbrella shop in all the land!

Sam's door is open wide,

Come in from the storm,

Where you can hide.

It's plain to see,

Sam's a nice fella, happy as can be!

Got every color, every size to pick,

From a tiny parasol to a fancy walking stick.

There’s big ones, small ones,

For your tall & short ones,

Umbrellas for your mamas & papas too,

What you need? Sam's got it for you!

When wind is whippin’

& sky is steel gray,

& you lost your bumbershoot

The other day?

There's a cute little shop with an open door,

Sam’s got what you’re looking for.

Sam’s Umbrellas, what a sight,

A ray of sunshine in your rainy night.

& if you're thinkin’ of someone dear,

Get an umbrella for your fella, right in here!

From silky black to indigo blue,

Sam's got the perfect shade for you.

Open one up, it’s a pure delight,

Sam’s Umbrellas makes everything right!

No matter what the weather might bring,

Sam's umbrellas makes every heart sing.

That’s Sam’s Umbrellas

Sam’s Umbrellas!

Beneath cobalt sky, unmarred by clouds, the fallen creature has waited two long weeks on a neighbor’s hillside, still as midwinter silence while its kin pass by, acknowledging neither life nor death.

Early March hangs in abeyance between seasons: breath visible, ground softening beneath. The turkey vulture perches patient on bare branches, observing time's slow procession.

No competition here. No urgency. Under a bright sun, the dark-feathered keeper shifts branches, moving closer, reading invisible signs —when flesh surrenders its final resistance.

Down it drifts, a floating shadow crossing light, black-winged angel landing beside stillness. A moment of reverence—or perhaps assessment— before the sacred work begins.

Persistent probing, the mindful search for openings, for a softness yielding to purpose. Finding none, it turns to the backside, a dark gateway, yields first, a grim communion, beginning the slow inevitable transformation.

Tugging at underbelly fur, seeking entrance beneath, as sunlight warms what winter had preserved. High cirrus clouds now witness the odd tableau, an ancient ceremony repeated since before memory.

The deer has nowhere else to go. The vulture has nowhere else to be, then flies off, perhaps to return. The crocuses peek up through last Autumn’s leaves with patient certainty, as death, once again, makes way for life.

No, not

The faded

Camo-colored

Uniform worn

By hunters

Or soldiers

But aches

& pains in joints

& ligaments

Like the twisted

Ropes

Tied to billowing

Sails of old wooden

Ships rocking

Gently in the soft

Wind breathing on the water

Calm as death

Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious. - Proverbs 9:17

It begins with a base, thick as molten bullet lead, heavy in the fissures of my gelatinous brain, glistening dark, a little too inviting. I measure each spoonful with the precision of a safe-cracker. The wrong combination could tip the scales toward disaster; the penalty could be deadly. It has to be just right, though it feels a little wrong. In the simple pot, sweet dust — crystalline white, deceivingly innocent, like the slowly spreading grin of someone with something to hide. I pour it in like a stealthy thief climbing through a window, knowing that once it dissolves, there’s no turning back.

I reach for bittersweet powder, fine as ash, dark as 3 A.M. thoughts. It clings to the air, ghostly, like a painful memory best forgotten. The scent rises, sharp as a steak knife under my chin, alluring, pulling me deeper, like a lover. I let it settle, stirring and folding into the swirling mix, watching it disappear into its center, knowing it has only hidden itself within. I surrender, realizing we’re all in search of something, all waiting for the thing that will complete us, even if we know it may kill us, or at least a part of who we are.

A pinch of self-deception follows, almost too innocent to matter — a hint of danger, a reminder of invisible boundaries crossed. Then, the oil. Thick, glossy, it binds everything together like the final turn of a key clicking tumblers. The concoction is nearly complete, humming with its own dark energy, daring me to take it further, to finish what I’ve started.

Let's do this.

The heat rises in my face as I ease it in. It grows more potent, gaining power with a rhythm all its own, the heavenly aroma filling the room like a lonely siren’s call in a cloudy fog. A glowing bead of sweat skids like a getaway car down the roadway of my temple, as if being chased by the law. I catch myself inhaling deeply, then holding my breath, as if any moment I might detonate, blowing open secrets never meant to be unlocked. And when I finally exhale and lift it out, there it is, smoldering, dark as a coal-fired oven. Verboten. Ready.

One taste, and I’m guilty as charged. The flavor — salty and sweet, smooth and rich as a buttery tongue. Now I’m complicit. I imagine someone, eyes shut, trembling, as they plot to steal my dreamy secret, aching to savor forbidden pleasure. It’s the rush of guilt, the thrill of a craving answered, the transgression, the crossing of a broken yellow line on a two-lane highway. Not a good idea. Delicious. I think about warning them, but there’s always a part of me that wants to be caught, that craves, even when I know it will burn and blister inside. For without a touch of risk, there is no growth.

And there it sits, still warm, still dangerous — decadent, criminal, waiting to make clever thieves of us all.

You have the right to remain silent. If you can.

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Ursa Major

I am certainly

no big bear

but in winter

when sky darkens

& earth is bright with snow

my fur grows

thick as a bed of pine needles

my belly fattens

like a yawning moon

ready for cold months

& scarce game

my hands & feet

become sluggish paws

I want to curl

up in my cave to dream

of fish & wait

for spring

By j.e. moyer

Whoosh

After we finished vacuuming our house, my wife feels free to water her menagerie of plants, a plump chicken is roasting in the oven, and childhood memories softly return. It's Sunday, and my mother long gone would have called our cursory cleaning “redding up.” Pittsburgh was usually cooler in October, though the sun was shining in all its glory, and the colored leaves had just started their annual drop from the oaks, maples, and sycamores to conjure up their fragrant peppery fall musk. Every year smells a little different. Two or three blue jays metallically call, off in the distant treetops, as they did back then, their voices scraping like the opening and closing of an aluminum screen door as they shamelessly yearn to re-connect with each other. Wearing a thin jacket, I was lying on my back in the backyard of a friend’s house just up the street and would hear an occasional lone car soothingly whoosh across a busy intersection in our neighborhood. Whoosh. I felt safer indulging in nothingness back there because that's what backyards are for, freer to look up into the empty blue through the branches angling like crooked elbows dangling in a cloudless sky, the sun blazed overhead, dozens and dozens of appendages casting dappled and lacey shadows on my green carpet of grass. Whoosh. Our wind chimes now signaling a light breeze in the present, my dog pawing at my leg for attention, and then barking at me to pull myself up and out of my chair to play in our backyard on this bright, warm, Autumn afternoon.

One day

a child will look

straight into the tired

eyes, the weary

face of the wrinkled

person staring

back at you in the mirror & whisper

that they deserve the deepest

kind of love, the best kind of life

& devote yourself to giving it to them

all over again

as long as you can

A poem moves in center, a blur beneath the summer sun at the warning track. A defiance of gravity, a leap of flannel faith in leather and grace. The white pill against the green snagged, a comet stolen from the sky and robbing the batter. The throw, a crisp crimson streak stitching outfield to infield, a seam in the impossible.

We too reach for the scorching catch. Hope to snag the unexpected, the searing curveball life hurls at us. We dream to spin and launch, to defy boundaries, the whispering doubts, the odds against us. The roar of the crowd fades, the memory of the wondrous catch a bittersweet echo. In the imperfect arc of bending words, lives a quiet hero. The game continues, under endless blue skies, the heat unforgiving. The scent of freshly cut grass, the pop of a ball meeting leather or wood—the music of effort and grace.

And even in the fumbled glove, the missed connection, the bobbled throwing errors, there's a dignity in daring, in taking the chance. Though a loss hits us, hard as a diamond, there is a Willie Mays in us all, forever running, leaping, and throwing the world back home.

Close your eyes, and feel the cool November air and pungent autumn leaves settle around you. You are twelve, a child not yet in adolescence on the cusp of something unknown. Tonight, a full moon hangs low and heavy in the velvet sky, casting an ethereal glow like the cone of a city street lamp on the world. You and your brothers, a wild pack unbound, are playing a game – The Great Escape. Laughter tumbles from your lips, a joyous melody marching, echoing through the twilight.

The thrill of the chase leads you to forbidden territory, the roof of a neighbor's garage built into a hillside. It’s the perfect hiding spot, beyond the reach of most children. You perch precariously, a victor in your own mind. (They’ll never find me here.) But the moon, a silent witness to countless adventures, sees another ending. The world tilts out of your control, the ground rushes up, and a gasp escapes your lips, the air pounded out of your lungs.

Pain explodes through your body, a symphony turned discordant. Disoriented, you lie there on the concrete driveway, the moon a pale companion in the vast emptiness. Time stretches and contracts like a rubber band, your brothers' worried faces like Silly Putty appear, relief washing over them like a cool breeze.

The days that follow are a blur of sterile white and sharp, searing pain. A cumbersome brace becomes an unwelcome companion, a corset of limitations. Baseball, once a language you spoke fluently, becomes a silent memory, and the well-worn glove under your mattress a hollow echo of a lost passion begins to fade.

In December the news arrives, a blow echoing the one that stole your mobility and your dreams. Roberto Clemente, your hero, the legendary man who defied limitations with every elegant swing of the bat and inspired diving catch in right field, is gone. It feels like the moon has stopped dancing in the sky, the world a little dimmer without his light.

This is the night your childhood spills out. Innocence, that fragile spiderweb, gives way to a new season, a bittersweet vulnerability. Yet even in winter darkness, a seed inside will take root. You learn that strength is not just about defying limits, but also about accepting them. The fall may have taken a piece of you, but it cannot extinguish an eternal spirit. Yes, a part of you is gone.

As you emerge from this cocoon of pain, you carry invisible scars, a poignant reminder etched beneath the moonlit sky. Within you lies planted a reconfigured strength, a deeper knowing of yourself and the ever-unfolding path ahead. The journey will be different, but the unwavering light within guides you forward into hope.

I am certainly

no big bear

but in winter

when sky darkens

& earth is bright

with snow

my fur grows

thick as a bed

of pine needles

my belly fattens

like a yawing moon

ready for cold

months & scarce game

my hands & feet

become sluggish paws

I want to curl up

in my cave to sleep

& dream of fish

& wait

for spring

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Time, a sculptor with wrinkled hands,

Shaping moments, shifting sands.

Sometimes gentle, a lover's touch,

Holding dreams desired so much.

Sunlight’s fingers, warm & bright,

Painting days with golden light.

Laughter ripples, carefree & young,

Poems dance on Time's sweet tongue.

But the writer’s grip may tighten fast,

A caress turns into a numbed hand’s grasp.

Clouding eyes & a graying head,

Echoing truths Chronos fed.

Hands that cradled now constrict,

Stealing breaths, a clock’s cold tic.

Each a hammer on the bone,

A chilling reminder we could be alone.

Clutching shadows of the past,

Letting go of what cannot last.

Yet, in the artist's final hold,

A story’s etched, a life unfolds.

A bittersweet song’s end,

Beauty remains, in what

Time cannot mend.

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I remember

learning to read poems

life rafts whispering hope

the same way I imagined God

already knew me

without saying a word

but most "teachers" demanded

read read read

even as they misunderstood

how to teach children

how to read

as if shaming was the answer

calling us

lazy

rather than unlocking

our inner secrets & reading us

me like an odd poem

like this poem

so today I don't believe

in God

I believe in poems