Footprints is a collection of poems that were either written or revised recently or recalled from work begun and lost fifty years before. Some recall pleasant memories of my beloved Veronica and some her later struggles with ill health. She was born and grew up in Dublin, and Ireland remained a special place for both of us. The DART from Howth to Greystones “tunnels under Queen V’s crown and pops out for the view above Killiney Bay” where “the magic face of Ireland is found.” We met and married in Syracuse. Events and places from that time are featured in some of the poems. Newtown Plus Five was written shortly after news coverage of the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook school massacre. An Elegy for One and Many commemorates the life of a friend and the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue rampage who died during the same period of time. Many of the poems are written in traditional verse forms and rhyme schemes.
A number of poems reflect concerns about America: the face it presents to the world and the state of its democracy. Ode from a Colonial Bowl recounts a family history of its founding.
Flint where “once-upon-a-time America coursed through (its) leaden arteries to nurse its middle class.” In Vietnam “we’ve grown old, some fifty years removed from when our universe was rolled into a white-hot ball,” to find the common threads we shared in youth to pursue our common legacy. American Graffiti asks, “Can Cicero and Caesar coexist within republican constraint?”
Let Freedom Ring calls upon us to answer “the distant bells of freedom pealing” in Ukraine. The challenge for both poet and reader is to understand how both poems can be compatible in our logic.