Notes from Exile: Three Poems

Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.

When I wrote my unsent letter to Judge Bolden, I enclosed three poems I had drafted during my incarceration. They were my attempt to show that even in confinement, writing became a lifeline—something that allowed me to wrestle with shame, regret, and the search for meaning.

These poems are fragments of that process: small records of a mind trying to reconcile the weight of failure with the possibility of growth. I share them here, not as finished work, but as testimony to what can emerge even in the bleakest circumstances.

---

GRANDDAUGHTERS VISIT

She arrived even in this tangled prison, her beguiling

innocence still intact, everything fair and starlight,

the magic of everyday life only seven-year-olds possess.

Still not aware of her own beauty, nor the world hers,

we played like always, not a hint of place.

Three missing teeth, that rare beauty of absence

so special in a child’s smile, and stories of

the tooth fairy and magic pillows.

But on goodbye, she paused having grasped the scene,

and in the softest of words that only we could hear,

“Is it hard?” she asked. I wanted to say yes, but didn’t.

Enough perfection and innocence to burn

a shameful hole right through you.

Then a final wave from that perfect face of

petals and smiles even I couldn’t spoil.

THE TRACK

Plodding and weaving my way around

the quarter mile of footprints in the ash

and mud, I calculate the dreams and

exhausting tipping points that brought me here.

Its lovely rural beauty and transcendent

silence, the comforting solitary radio

and it’s bridge to life and freedom.

And how many footprints have disappeared

in too many seasons that you can see in its

condition of overgrowth, rivulets and disrepair,

my own already disappearing with each turn.

Today I walk the best of winters breath,

and the falling sun at my favored hour,

a Beethoven riff a séance of sorts to

heal the despair of the fading light.

DEAR MARBLE COLLEGIATE CHURCH

I am an inmate at a federal prison,

like all prisoners, exiled in relentless

remorse and turning points that passed,

the most painful the internal

confinement in search of its meaning.

But on certain nights, I recall the

climb up Marbles steps and

those welcome smiles, its open doors,

the special scent of holiness inside,

the rapture of its transcendent choir,

everything telling you to come in,

you're loved in here. Everyone's loved

in here, and all is forgiven.

My daughter was married there.

I can still hear the Marriage march,

its resounding bursting joyous hymn,

as we waited, my daughter and I

in arms and love on that special day.

I am seventy-seven years old,

I have run out of time and

grace and only a memory

of your blessed church.

Please say a prayer for me,

even from this dark place

I will know it.

---

You can read the entire collection of poems, titled A Different Kind of Hell, published by Moonstone Publishing.