Night Fire, Nightmares Revisited, Woman in the Other Room, Battle of Atlanta, A Sip of Wine, An Ode to Poe, and many more... Eight-one poems in all.

Let me hold the laughing children;

Let me join hands with them.

Let us dance round together,

Chanting, singing, giggling,

Mocking bluebirds, dropping pebbles,

Wondering who will be it again.

Let me look into their faces;

See their bright eyes, ruddy cheeks,

Hear their excited, high-pitched voices,

Shouting rhymes from days of old.

Let me mark time not in minutes,

On a clock I cannot see,

Rather, let me count, as do the children,

Games played on stick marked dirt.

Hop round in circles, stoop to pick up

Pebbles, jump a rope, Red Rover

Send my classmate, playmate over.

Today's best friend, yesterday's stranger,

Does not matter. Play's the thing.

Cup your hands to shout a secret

In your teammate's ear over

The merry schoolyard din. Hurry.

Before the dreaded school bell rings.

No more shouting, no more talking,

No more whispers, only silence

Permitted as summoned children

Line up two by two,

Hold your partner's hand.

Lowest grades march in first.

Teachers' aides, monitors caution

No more running, stand up straight.

Older children know the rules.

Single file in color coded corridors.

Take off, hang up jackets, sit at desks.

At the blackboard, Teacher's waiting

Time for Lessons as recess ends.

Outside, I alone am waiting,

To join hands with them again.

Riding a tilt-a-whirl

With eyes that see past today

To a first ride taken long ago.

The moment never ceases.

It lies waiting to regenerate

Like a seed under winter's snow. 

factories, schools and stores

with wood shingled tenement apartments,

stacked as high as hard wood main carrying

beams allow, fill urban black tar pastures

where gang herds roam, graze and feed,

untended except by predators and scavengers,

sustained on the blood, flesh, life force

of young strays, the innocent and weak.

Man's jungle beginnings modeled these

once densely populated inner cities

where over-crowded streets, hunger

and greed breed violence and decay

before giving way to land-clearing

bulldozers, the tools of encroaching

suburbia, gated communities

that, like zoos, isolate and preserve

predator from predator that each

may be viewed, visited and studied,

photographed, made the subject

of movies, legends and children's tales.