The birds sing of hunger
through the pillars of lights  
that render the sky into being

the great crease of  You stumbling
through onto my bedclothes
kindling the room once more

with the face of peace found-out
satiating my starvation with
the lamb’s diminutive thorn

a whole world
waiting for Your
                     Yes

My wife hears the **** man outside spraying  the lawn.
The next day it’s the pest control guy doing the foundation.

He doesn’t come into the house to spray each room anymore.  Just doing the outside is enough to keep the bugs away,
says the pamphlet he leaves at the top of the steps.

My wife comes from the grocery store
and  immediately complains about the smell.

She gives me the long receipt for the thirteen bags
of freshly ground and harvested death
that will feeds us for the next few weeks.

I look it over, go into my office, shut the door.
I file it away. Next, I pay the quarterly bills for
                  those who do my killing.

I hate mowing the lawn,
hate the way it sends chinch bugs
flying to the stars after the rain.

In my dreams, however,  I have lots of land,
and delight in sculpting neat parallel rows
with my tractor- over and over, on and on,

aerating the start of warrens and burrows
for rabbits and woodchucks to finish their
tunnels, for deer to graze my flowers, weeds.

In the morning the milkweed blossoms,
bringing supping butterflies. At night,
the fireflies rise painting the darkness.

When the grass grows high and it’s time
to mow again, I will close my  eyes,
and feel the biting bugs and buzzing flies

mating dreamscapes in the coming dusk.

The Hudson sleeps
and the clouds sweep
over the moon.

I promise little dear
with this small  tear
I will always love you.

Sleep, sleep, sleep
peace, peace, peace
the promise I grant you.

This song is the fact
that your star remains intact
in my heart, steady and true.

The river’s lull,
the moons’s full glow
will always pull us through.

The path will be rough.
The road back tough.
Yet, my cloak will  surround you.

Startle not, this wet drop,
is but my love pulled tight and true,
My love pulled tight and true.

Around me, within me,
within you, around you
sings the song of just us two.

The song I sing
is but the sad  tune of this night.
It will not be the story of you!

My life has been rapture,
rupture and strife
like all others in life.  

But you shall be more than my sorrow,
more than my wants,
more than my sad thoughts.  

You will be the moon song.
The one that everyone sings
to overcome the night!

It’s just a matter of just time,
of just time, just  time,
time, time, time…
,

i like to cling to the grime

the small grit of my father’s ashes
underneath my fingernails,
the part of him that refused
to fall to the rocks in the scattering

my mother’s scented oil in her hair,
her burning fat seasoning in the skillet
stinging my nostrils and eyes leaving me
seeing smelling less than my faultering ears

his ash sticks in the wall of my lungs
trying to pressure my air to diamonds
cutting me to his symmetry trying
always to rinse my blood of her tears

When I look at the sky its blueness mixes
and cycles with thunder, lightning and rain.

I notice, the  vulture, content to feast on leftovers of once
beautiful things, fly  with the same majesty of the hawk.

At night, I see the stars burn bright and smell the rain’s petrichor snake off the worn sides of Racoon Mountain.

Yet, I the only thing that is neither sky, bird, mountain nor star,
wonder, spend so much time wondering, if this is peace or joy.

Gray wolves howl invisible
on the granite shoreline
waiting for the sea’s answer-

standing tall on the headland,
against a wind that allows no trees,
signatures the stones with ageless storms—

howling to know why this once lush place
where endless fields of poppy intertwined with pine
is now defaced with crops of suburban homes.

Above, a falcon startled from its rocky perch soars
in its time- seeing in the shadows withdrawing
from clouds- the last glint of  beautiful stones.