Three Poems for Three Good Men
for Harley, Tom, and John Happy Father's Day The Blanket I begin to see my father through the spectacles of his own skin. Cross-hatched by decades of sun on water it is marked like a cave wall with patterns that could mean one thing or another. He has rare virtues: vitality thick walls interior spaciousness. He retains in all seasons a temperature of his own. Easy to want to imitate hard to grow the hide that could blanket me as well. Sherry Robbins, from Or, the Whale, BlazeVOX [Books] A Prince He is by nature quiet and can be, when he chooses, hard to spot. I would follow him into the earth. His instincts are sure and his tenderness innate. I, like cat and deer, turkey and frog, come near him and grow quiet too. He has no thought of changing me, nor deer, nor birds, but we, things as we are, draw nearer still and want to change. S. Robbins, from Readings Social Isolation: Day 94 My daughter married a good-natured man. What more can you ask? He’s kind and funny and smart. He makes a mother-in-law feel welcome. Today he sent a photo across the social distance miles, his hand on her belly. “Love the three of us” he texted, no comma, and no comma god I do. S. Robbins, July 2020
Sherry Robbins 