The autumn moon was receeding
At 5 AM this morning
Riding the wave of seasons
Wind stirring in a constant dance with the leaves

My cold mug of milk set upon the wire table outside
Under the Serviceberry
So I can pet the dog.

Kinetic shadows on the table
Wisped and whipped over the mug
Laying upon the white liquid
Thicker than the reflected light and dark. Boundaries that can't be bought.

Did the shadows, could the shadows, penetrate the surface of the milk?
Going deeper in where I can not see
To a place furrowed low
Perceived, yet not seen.

Is it a place with a soul
Creamy and still
Unmatched like time, marching or halting, that
which we can not ever hold?
Shadows on milk do not sink.

Believe what you know.
And may all
the better angels
follow you
        wherever you go

Many things going on around you.
Clothes hang on chairs, littered
Like valves of the heart hang
By cords in diastole
Waiting for blood
What do you care about?

I have too many clothes.

Where you stand now,
can be moved.
It's either you or
the ground.
Is it light you seek
or darkness?
If you remain immovable
Like that thing in the street,
Tripping, your face will meet
The ground, hard.

Lay ****** and bruised,
Defiant as the cement
That slapped your face.
It gets dark real fast
When all you hear is the mold
That lays you to rest.

Be alert and aware like
A library door.
Possibly your unnoticed
Life is awakened by
Words that wrap you with
History and comfort as if
Every minute is the opening
From a wrapper of your
Favourite candy. Live
In the trace of  light
Where you stand.

Whatever I didn't give you

that you needed
that
. .   I
am sorrowful for.

I thought I was limitless
    in my charity and resources.

It is obvious
not
to be so.

It was all I had.

Today I need you
One line of words mistaken
Remember I live

Please me here
Take from her there
Give to him always
Without a dare

I am sinking.

Dropping the arrow
Flung to the centering heart
Blood remains untouched

Tell me of your delight
The wisp of wind
That catches your hair
Breezy enough to sense
The winds direction
To which you set your sails
Moving through glass water
Unwilling to break

Tell me of your delight
In the shell of a snail
Digging up its squishy life
For just you alone
Thumbing through
In a smile and a jar of joy
Enough to break a mother's heart
With every win and loss
On your way to manhood

Tell me of your delight
As you swing in the air
Legs kicking as branches do
When the air picks you up
No longer weighing you down
All cares wash through
The space of regrets
And deposit themselves
As pebbles on the shore
Where your feet will land

Tell me of your delight
Where the garden snake
Attempts to outwit
Your stride in the grass
As you quietly watch
With patience of a lifetime
That marches ahead in this stillness
That is between the distance
Where now is forever
In your hand you swoop up
A life trying to escape yours
Gleeful are you as you set
The creature free once more

Tell me of your delight
As you see the rays of a day
Shine on every stone
And drop of rain
Washing rivers deleting cares
Surpassing a mother's gloom
Her soup of ingredients
Marinated longer than your
Innocence wants to keep birthing
It will be her death that it takes
To be released and unburdened
So you can breathe again this day
Heart open to drown all sorrows
Brand new as the dew

I was sent
to a dark room
From your words.
Littered on the couch
Spilled into the air
Dark-like smells
smudging and
Textures touching
With antipathy for being futile.
       Irrelevant.
That artifact of darkness

I know the unlit
The heavy
      immovable monolith of despair.
Fence sitting for days
In Wait for a shape of
intentional light.
Incremental, as it
Fractured the silence.
That burrowed through
Despondent dirt
down Here.

I saw you flick past
a sliver of
Shiny coins
Alarmed by their details,
Lost in remnants
Of absurdity
As the cloudless score
rounded the sharp
        edges
That softened
        your eyes
       as you peeked outside.

Prayers don't go anywhere
They are encapsulated
In our air down here

Engrossed in
Electronic word game
Famed on phone

Ad delay my
Path to next level
Dropping my attention

Sudden rush of
Nothingness in
My blood

No screen time
Felt a bottomless
Bleak pit

I fell until
I measured my breath
Of existence leaving

All defined on
False electric bait
Clips of wins and loss

Almost threw up
In my felt emptiness
Messy messy power grab

Measure me alive
Today and Now
Not then or ever

Corners of the heart
Where sorrow lays in blood
Loving kindness seeks

Are you of perfect
Circumference for
A captain in the sky
Voyaging vagabond at night 'til morn'

Walking under the
End of season elms and sycamores
The branches as oars in water
Tilling below shadows come, shadows go, as you stay steady
For I was the water in a rippling stream and you were a solitary sturdy force above
Emulating my gait and gaze

Light hanging with every branch
Into my water
As you lay your supermoon
Beam into our futures
Until you come  again
Leaving your soup of hope in Everything you touched
Even souls

Where will the future be at your return
With hate or love,
Or something in between as a sturdy captain should, be there once more for all the visitors below
Beseeching you for navigation
From on high to below
Altruistic by sight, your perfect shaped stone in the dark of night

Feeling like a stylus on a premium LP
Can't lift up too slow or slide it
Fragile bone dust
Be slow, be quick, be ready
Scratching is not an option

Feeling this way again
Second-hand turntable
Treated as a diamond or replaceable
How is it, my friend

The stylus feels old
Not sure if the sound is reaching you
Enough to bring you
Out alive, on my knees
Scratching is not an option

Fate slips
As a fallen horse's
  hoof
To prove there
Is a yonder, unwritten
Which we can not
   write
With our fingerless hands
Stumbling through life
Gripping guideless
    reigns
Tripping over a wish
Never to be ours
Fate did never
     find

I walked into
An old building
Vacant yet
Lived in

I opened
Door after door
Peering into
New air

I realized
I was searching
For what was
To be

There were
No windows
On the doors
For a reason

I could not peer
Into the future
The past
Was futile

There was
No knowing
Left only to patterns
Or engagement

I could stop
Walking
The corridors
Of this wood abode

One more door
To go
What was next
Solitude or sorrows

As I stood alone
I met the room
With nothing to lose
No compass for death

I'm a shell
My soul has left
Empty as can be
Space that's left
Is not me

I'm useless
As a highway
Without cars
I might as well
Be on Mars

I'm gone
But still alive
Like stars persist
Until the light is gone
My body insists

I'm a circumference
The boundary surrounds
Dry carcass bone
I care not
Just lost-and-found

I won't return
To my body of ruin
Burial plans made
Threaded into a patchwork quilt
Upstaged and waylaid

I'm now safe outside
Myself
I see you looking in
She is gone from her
Forever now thick and thin

I'm tired of sycophants  
Complicit in democracy's destuction
By their hands, skinned alive
I left my body today
In order to survive

If ever I grow small
Consider me still useful
Uncrippled color

Once, you leave again
Are my wounds bigger than me
An outline contains

Between leaf and life
Wet ochre leaves bundled exit
Life was lived now gone

On the road outside
Of the fence
The Border Collie hears
The call of the
Doggies
On the inside

Enclosed behind
The wooden fence
The Alaskan malamute
The Drever, the Poodle
Bustle the edge of the barrier
Bark, bark, bark
A cacophony

Let us out
Let us come with you
Pledging to obey,
The Collie
On hind legs
Of a towering stature
Lifts a paw
Finds the latch
The gate creaks open
Uncorking in celebration

They run in gleeful circles
Hounds to escape artists
Unbound and free from tyranny
Of a heartless master
Marking their new territory
Of tree trunks
Sidewalks and fields

Have you ever seen
Such jubilation
Mirth and gaiety
Wagging their tails
Like helicopter blades
With gail force glee

They take off
Like upside down rain
Up, up, up
Every which way
Friends forever
Boundless canines
In search of the next
immured pooch who waits
For the musketeers

The liver
Is a mother
It takes in the bad stuff
of the body
    (the **** that no other *****
No other person wants)
Clean things up
Sometimes, the liver fails
But, it can grow new tissue too
Mother's are resilient
So, ya see,
"it is always something"

How sorry I am
That's the title of the
Book I will write.
If I say,
I may write,
Where does my sorry go?

Let's walk down a path
Of economic prosperity
Turned to wealth
And forget the person

Definition of improving
What already exists
Translates to robot creation
From human biome matrix

We look over our shoulder
What wAs once us fades
As R and D facilities erase
Try to prove their worth

At what cut in our flesh
How deep into tissue
Or sawed bone are you
Willing to purchase

A world now
                 not our own?

How to leave out hate
Say less and stand out far more
Carve your words with love

All this life sought
Was in my feet forward,
Backing into stumble on rocks
With no path, life is an S curve

It hurts to fall hard
Worse yet
Is to not know why
I walked at all

A cool spring morning
In the rain with my canine on lead
Rushes into the glade
Where a doe may rest unaware

Still at old age I know, nothing
Every morning in the dark
My eyes open, for what?
I have lost all meaning of why

Are the next rising suns
Teachers on the green that
Remain after the snow melts
A reason for standing up?

I lost track of my dog in the meadow
As I listen to a poet who says
That tomatoes do not bleed
Is my life a fruit I can eat

Through the spring branches
I see a home below, pale yellow
A white door and a pane of glass
Asking, will I come forward more

An unknown, will I care to find out
Where is the deer and my dog
The door seductively beckons,
Walk this way with strong shoulders

Every day is an opening
For planting new things
Or letting the past burn to ash
Stunned in body and bones my trips to the ground

The knees and hands ******
And worn, as the apple skin
Holds a hole from the worm
I am the fruit as much as the scar that shines, happening now

Memory garbage dump
Holding everything old
Aged releasing all

I've realized my brain
Swollen from decades of thought
Now, only wants now

Goodbye to the past
Earth quakes releasing the crust
Cliffs of synapse fall

Dead Enders

Places we have been to
Places we compare to
Travel light years
In circles around us
Over time
Around and around we go
Spiraling through the self-disparaging
Thoughts we hack ourselves into
Until,  Sense-less
Dead enders.

So, unthread,
Unthread,
Unthread.

Unwind
Before your prospects
Leave this space.
Around and around we go.
Transcenders.

Every thing made,
Not from human-kind
As if humans knew
Kindness, From this earth
Has a song each its own.

The melodies of every stone
Of every branch, from every
Droplet of a wave,
The Wave itself
Lends a message that is held
Together by the sun.

The lyrics cast light
On every shadow
Drawing maps of age
And wisdom along a line of Ink
So fine that it remains hidden
Behind what it means to be alive.

Every thing is a seed
With its own song
Rooting up for no reason
Heavy, even as the weight
Of a raindrop tries to be measured
In its sheer amount, the music will
Outlast this and every season
Beyond this
the orchestra of time.

An hour of fire
Catches sight and soul for hire
Pain recedes in light

Vibration of light
From the flower Moon
Like buttered tulip
Melting inside
Dancing between my joints
Weaving a river in my blood
A yellow only flowers would know
Moving like honey-milk
To a temperature just right
Breeding wave by invisible wave
As you set far south west
Before anyone knows
You left behind your pollen of hope.

From here, four thousand feet down
The Rocky Mountain Range
As winter subsides and spring begins
Purples and whites among the forest, up there, from here
My shaded porch by a hundred years old ash
I see where I once was, high above.

From here, as the tick, toc, tick, toc
Snuck through the air of time
As the children lost their wonder
The fancy climbing, the hold on tight
Of a tree swing dangled, beckoned
Them. They lost their spark
From here at this distance I see it all stuffed in the dirt of time.

I find self in argument
With sons
Over money, over crypto
Which is a mysterious coin
Being chased by new generations

I am belittled
When giving advise on
Intangible wealth of this century
That my experience is seen as useless,
Described by them to me,
"My Boomer generation knows Nothing"

Told to feel unworthy as an argument builds
Put down as a mother as
My brain pain of their reckless youth
I had to pay attention to
As if the reciept of my womb
Was a wasted placenta
All because of a bit of coin searching for wealth

The riches these young men of mine
Will likely not find from the
Depth of their families legacy
Who will be written off in their own time
Is in their grandfather's wartime draft card, tied to the most important person
Asking,
"Name of Person Who Will Always Know Your Address",
Let that sink in.
"Relationship  of This Person" , "Mother"

"Right under the skin it lingers
Sitting alone in a field laced with nevers
The stockings were hung but they fell off the wall
The tearful shedder from whom you depart
God,why is the stairway so high

Hate locks the door to the heart
Within that gloomy volume
true wisdom would not
give desperation
a chance to grow
And passions are cooled to absolute zero
And chimpanzee bookies
Lay odds on your death
Over/Under 2 weeks

I knew there was a turn
but it never turned up
Remnants find their way to the floor
A soak in the rain
Casting light through
all my shadows
Our perfect shaped stone in the dark of night
Leaving your soup of hope in Everything you touched
A day for lions will come

Squirrels came out of nowhere
My face gets
sticky
To the point you come out richer than you were before
The cold kept me in today
Captivated by captivity
I only let her skim the surface
But I see too much, scratching out your eyes
I write to be free, flows right out of me
She let love lead, soft, slow and brave
And the spark off a sparrows wing
All of them
In their wonder
Are on my side"

Nothing is familiar
I have no place
A stone in a field of grass
the wind bends the grass
the stone looks around
nothing is familiar only the ground

Nothing is familiar
Where did I go
what is to be done
Lost in the avenues and avenues of my  Mind
There is no strength to pick up the stone and throw it away
It would just be in another field of grass
Estranged

Nothing is familiar
not even who I am
unknown
The painted landscape has no shape, where should I put the tree
no familiarity
Scanning the clothes on the rack
I used to know they were me
I am no one now
Nothing is familiar in this estrangement

The Leftovers  or   (The Ones Who Survive)

Recipe: ****** *** Pie
The dope, the spoon,
In gutter water
Why did he die, not she

When does it end
Those who survive
Left out to cool
With no friend

Fiends and friends of addicts
Mystify us,  who do not understand
What makes them keep shooting
Into veins of foreign land

They join by ignorance or associate
A friendship they say more strong
Then that of a parent or a childs love
This couldn't be more wrong

The twine of codependency
Makes fools of us all
When one of them dies
Pleading for answers while wishing the other would fall

These are the Leftovers, the suffering addict
With their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends
Who may have saved and tried before
Their pain and shame more severe if you pretend
You are not an ingredient
No less a fiend if sober
If you don't show up
To soothe the pain of being a leftover

Recipe: ****** *** Pie
The dope, the spoon,
In gutter water
Replaced by methadone

When does it end
Those who survive
Left out to cool
With no friend

Churned by cream
Sweet
Oh, but it is
A rose
Dipped in butter
Translucent yellow
Melting into fleshy
Pink
Punctuated thinly
On the edges
Where dirt might get
Into a fingernail
Showing a line
Where color meets
Love of a rose
Singing the sweet and salt
Of butter on
My olfactory
Tongue to the
Earthy fragrance
Only a rosey delight
Gives
To my sight
You are one
Of a kind
My butter Rose

I looked up
This morning
Before
the globe
Of life lifted from
The dark horizon

The passengers
In the sky
Began to announce
Their arrival
With frosting
Dressing the gray floaters
Tipping a hat to the mistress sun

As do the yellow roses
That glow in the darkest
Of green along the
Fence. Next to me.
Waking up.

One only knows
The presence of the days beginning
By these clouds
These flowers
And the black capped chickadee
Announcing all clear
See-see dearee
All threats are gone.

Ambiguity
Seven Times
Maybe one and two
Or many verbal words
Scatter our grasp
For sense and meaning
A puzzle thrown
In the Air here and there.

Here these words
Are pieces unconnected
Even as the word, THE,
Can take us to "the" beach
Or to " the" room
What you bring can
And Might
Be your rescue. Maybe.

You are here.
In the dark or light
Where one can't be defined
Without the other
Just as the meaning of you
Lives never in just one place
But resolved
Simultaneously ambiguous
This is your beauty.

Follow me
To the inescapable
Matter of shadow
Unerasable
Shivering to escape
Your footsteps
In the sun.
Shape shifting
Always there
Tuned to you
Even as you lay
In the grass
Of a park
Where children's voices
Have their own
Wave length.
Your history of insults
You carry around
Year upon year
May feel absent in the light
But your shadow is
Inescapable.
Like your hand in
The pocket of your purse
******* the seam
Is vulnerable. Tend to it
This Place you fear.
There is no war.
Come out. Reach.
Dance with it.

I'm coming back as a tree
I could leave now
For all I care

The tree is an Ash
Sturdily bends in
In the sharpest winter

Breezes blows the boughs
The waves from the Pacific Ocean
Are jealous of her cadence

I'll take my leave now
I've seen all I need to
When you hear the wind look up

I've returned
Rooted, alive, without a care
Let the cages of birds freely fly to me.