Poem: The Approaching Storm

On the eve of my 70th birthday, it seems I have turned into an old man shouting at the clouds... Here is the poem I read last night (before the Nor'easter hit) at The Space in Montclair, during an open mic sponsored by the New Jersey Poetry Circle. Photo courtesy of my friend, the wonderful poet Renee Dwyer.

(Yes, I wore a Notre Dame cap... #GoIrish🍀)

The Approaching Storm

I stand here, before the storm,

Wondering what our lives will be like

in the aftermath.

My parents are dead.

As I... with hair thinning, shoulders bowed... grow old.

Knowing my children will be responsible for the cleanup.

We know the storm is coming.

It is unstoppable.

We are already canceling plans.

The stars are aligned:

The trees prepared to fall,

the rising tides, the senseless violence.

Birds flock for safety.

Displaced deer are frightened.

Dogs are unleashed.

We can’t trust our leaders.

Liars, fools and bullies,

filled with false pride.

We can’t trust what might be true.

Even our churches are profit centers,

not a refuge for prophets.

I pray for our children,

but there’s little I still believe.

I still believe in the magic of threes.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

And today is the dawn, the dawn, the dawn…

Today is the dawn of the approaching storm.

Poem: Update on the Abandoned Asylum

For some reason, this 10-year-old post, about an abandoned asylum in Totowa, NJ, consistently generates interest on this site -- and, yes, the information posted there is out-of-date by several years. The North Jersey Training Center has long since been demolished and replaced with a St. Joseph's Health facility.

However, more than a decade later, I offer this new poem about the same location:

Matins for Totowa

On the Feast of St. Blaise,

I wake to a hazy memory:

a criss-cross of wax pressed to my neck

at the altar of St. James of the Marches.

This church still stands on Totowa Road,

decades later, in the borough I was raised.

Here, graves outnumber the living

and the families who bear their names.

This tightness around my neck

reminds me of the ill-fitting clothes

purchased by my mother 

at a discount store called Two Guys From Harrison.

We used to walk there when I was a boy

because Mom didn’t drive.

We’d hurry down Riverview Drive,

overlooking the glen on Vreeland Avenue.

Here, spread over 180 acres,

the North Jersey Training School complex

housed the “developmentally disabled”

behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

When I was an altar boy at St. James,

Fr. Lynch, fresh from Vietnam, gathered me

to assist him for devotions at the center’s chapel,

where the pews were always full.

Full-throated Rosaries were half-sung

by the women and young children who lived there,

proclaiming the "thee," thou" and "thy"

in every "Hail Mary" with loud exclamations.

 

Because “you" and "your" did not invoke the Lord.

The archaic words invoked poetry,

and the poetry invoked magic

that today conjures my morning prayer:

I beseech thee, St. Blaise,

unmute the muffled voices

from the abandoned asylum of my past.

Give thy breath to every forgotten grave.