Man


I don’t know if I am a practical person.

I don’t obsess over the uses of a watch.
It’s enough that it tick and the hands
move forward, even if I don’t.

When my dog paces in front of the door
I know I must walk him.  When he paws
my lap, I must feed him. He knows himself.

Today, I took him to the beach and
let him romp the shore, content like him,
to not know why the tides moves forward.

The tides are tireless and they go up and down
endlessly with a purpose  I’m not privy to.
My winding down bones know to let things be.

Today, the current matters. Tomorrow it won’t.
All that matters, this moment, is that my dog
returns the stick I’ve thrown and not run away.

Yet, nothing we accomplished in that time,
in all its impracticability, will matter
to all this ceaseless renewal all around.

Tomorrow the future will pull me from
my past even if my feet  don’t move,
even if my ashes are urned

After his deep illness
was over he laid
his body on hers—
the length of his body on hers—
all the sleepings, awakenings,
fights, teacup and coffee mornings,
their talks about everything and nothing,
the plummets, the joyous-awkward silences—

and with a tear, she beared his weight—
until it was gone.

Mommy, esta di descubrí el lenguaje de los fantasmas

Ghost talk? What are you talking about, Jonny?

Si mommy.  En serio descubrí.  Escúchame.

Ghost talk? What do they say?

Para saludar dicen: hoo hoo.

Para decir que sí, dicen: Hoo

And how do they say goodbye?

No lo sé.  They haven’t left yet.

Mama, today I discovered the language of ghosts.

Line 3:

Yes, mama. Seriously, I discovered it.  Listen to me.

Line 5:

To say hello they say: Hoo hoo.

Line 6:

To say yes they say: Hoo.

Line 8:

I don’t know.

When I was a child light shone
angels through my fingers
crowning my parents’ faces,
blessing the simple tasks of theirs:
table setting, pouring water—
how it lit the world in my upturned smile
and flowed through as I grew
and how it followed me home
and stayed, even in the dark.

Light was the water, earth,
reflecting off every animal,
every street, everything I touched—
the light always ahead,
the darkness, just softly behind
—doubts, questions, thoughts—
light, enlightening the dark words
of my mind and mouth.

And when the darkness caught up,  
and I watched my parents fall behind,
my body/smile down-turn to groan
and my thoughts and words
turn to memories— I realized how
the past was always near and how
grief turned everything to light.

The music is the scent in the air
that changes everything.

“I’ve got no time to lie,
I’ve got no time to play your silly games,”

it croons with a sweet she reggae lilt
pairing off the lovers from the pretenders,

shedding bodies to kiss and writhe
in adjacent rooms or the nearest alley

until only the a cappella
is left in the haze of ****

and turntable revolutions,
the scent of spicy ****
marinated in a calypso afternoon.

There be time for Marley and
his Small Axe vibe after they be gone,

the Rasta boys with their black power
rave, body slamming each other.

It’s all be a silly game, man-
a ***** dream to knowing Jah.

They be warriors until the last spin,
and it be time to turn spear to

that big mama cross they forever carry
and must fold to fit on the bus.

A woman’s beauty is light on the eyes,
best pinned in thoughts, not weighed down
by beautiful lines that cannot halt wrinkles.

The dying frost of dawn does not
feel sorry for the gravity of the nest
knowing the wrens inside can fly.
The ode is limited to its chilling beauty.

The sublime pleasure of discovering
on a stroll the transitory pleasures
of another’s pedestrian secret life
is only weighed  down by
future speculations of their destiny.

The gentle grace of a grazing fawn
killed by the hunter’s bullet
is elevated by the photo
caught before the moment.

The moon rises only on a setting sun
yet  the calf of a homeless man
is wondrous reflected in the night’s light.
Even the suicide jumping off the bridge
is beautiful in the dark fall.

The butterfly takes flight
in the shout of the
lepidopterist’s child
hoping to catch it in his net.
He goes home sad not
knowing what he has
lost with his heavy words.

I am not your dying son, I thought,
as my wife gave me the diagnosis,
remembering my mom in her dying chair.

I will not pass into final memories
watching the Pope in America.
“Bless me, Papa”,
will not be my last words.

I do not believe in my mother’s God
though He did write the best proverbs.
I do not sleep with a Bible on my pillow.
I wake up feeling my heartbeat and breath.

“I am going to die,” she said to me,
days before she passed, on our stroll
to the mailbox, school traffic humming,
finches at the feeder, magnolias blooming

removing her from the usual guard spot
at the window for sightings of the mail truck,
hoping for the delivery of the slightest news.

“You know, I’ve been talking to Jesus
because I don’t want to go to hell.”
“We’ve been through hell already,
haven’t we,” I said.

I imagined a weeping Mary
telling Jesus on the cross
“You never told me
anything of this.”

“Your poem made my day,”
were her last words on our walk,
the last she spoke to me.

A memory of the evenings
of my childhood,
washed over me:

The slice of night
filtering through
as I crept from my bed
to watch her praying the rosary.

Those last days she made a lullaby
with a hint of elegy in the song.
The box of her mind walked there.

The words were nonsense,
just reflections of the melody,
part of all the shining on the road.

She died,
like her mother before,
like her son will,
like we all, like life.

I regret not telling  
her of my dreams,
my nightmares,
my future

while sipping tea at midnight
with her at the kitchen table.
I can only wash, wipe
and pick up the crumbs.

Fallen leaves cannot open time
or add a few short years
to days never meant to be.

In my repose and cancer days,
grey smoke floats the sky
burnt paper and ashes
that drift my mother away.

Today I will be
an apple bringer,
a sower of Job’s tears,
a healer of grief.

Today I will be
the tarty sweet fruit
passed hand to hand
in the peace caravan.

Today I will be
the cooing melody
among a flight of doves.

Today I will be
the candle of the night
that shines the best
of my country.

Today I will be
the wind that spreads
the camphoric cries
that can not be blown out.

Tomorrow the world
will grant justice
for the obstinate tears shed.

Tomorrow God will
dance and sit amongst us
in the wake of his beautiful moon.

Tomorrow the residue of his love
will turn the screams into almonds
that we will eat with him.

Tomorrow we will witness
the miracle of all fallen songs
blossoming into tulips.

The world is the ultimate trick
It grants man thunder yet steals his lightning
every time.
It makes him think he has the sweetest smell
of every thing
even that his **** does not stink
that taming fire was his best theft
of all time
that a caged dove heralds peace
in our time
the best of love
that time is a curse and not a gift
that the wolf is the enemy of pigs
that the world spins straight on its own axis
that he has a mind of his own design
that the red rose blooms for him to smell
that cancer is part of its mortal revenge
that nature taught man how to frown
that it would steal his nailed smile, if it could
The world is the ultimate trick
and it poisons him to think she’s his motherland

I asked the haberdasher
to make me a new soul.
something inexpensive
and lighter than 21 grams
with a loose fit.

He made it,
draped me in it
then disappeared.

I went home
and hung it in the closet
.
The next day
I couldn’t figure out
how to put it on.
So, I left it in on its hanger.

Overnight it got darker
and had become a shadow.

In the light it went white.
I draped it over arm
and went for a stroll.

It feel out of my grasp
onto the sidewalk,
picked itself up and
followed perfectly behind me.

By twilight it had become invisible
and was complaining loudly
that it wanted to go home.

I took it back
to the haberdasher
like it asked of me.

The store was closed
and empty of every soul.
His tools had been left out.
Sadly, the master had gone home.

Wake dear, and rise,
sleep not this day.
Let our two dreams
play to and fro with each.

Let’s dance in the sun
shouting— one beam,
the light’s high joy.
You nor I will not cry today

as you gambol and swirl,
as I dream, hope,
now words, then love and vows
united.

‘Tis by the first touch
of moonrise’s delightful sway
will we share our future
with the stars.

What will happen
when we
stop writing poems?

What will poetry become
when we stop inspiring
and the beauty of words
is silenced or rejected?

We will leave the writing table
and descend into the valley
to find new sounds and laughter.

We will drink the last water
from thirsty mountains.

We will listen
to the resounding
music and laughter
of our own dark forests.

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.

Ariana, adopted the old Greek ways,
when Nikos died diving for sponges.
She encased her curses into two lead stones:
smuggling one into his coffin,
dropping the other into Naxos deepest well.
She made sure Nikos soul would  
carry her curse to the underworld
before it ascended to heaven,
or activated fully on the river of forgetfulness
for Death to see, read, feel her grief.
She had hired the local poet who still 
remembered all the magical phrases
and could reverse the flow of words.
She wanted Death
to throw himself to the crows, 
split like she was divided inside,
perish the same way Nikos drowned,
****** Death’s eyes to drunkenness
till he became a burden to the earth,
a useless sack of spoiled wine.
As she turned back and 
started to look away
she heard Nikos voice echo to her.
She turned around  and  In
the mist that crawled away to the Aegean
was revealed three Cretan hounds snarling 
behind the gate of the rich shipbuilder’s house.
The sea, the earth the sky collapsed in her.
The sound of tides, the swirling dust, the rain were
mocking this girl who knew only ordinary curses,
this widow doomed to live a long, grieving life
listening for Nikos sounds until her very end.

I am oxygen for you are the sky.

We exist only
because rain has formed the sea.

Our memory is buried
in every tide.

It waters swim inside
the roots of our blood.

The fluid of our language,
rippling stories in the school of words.

The bits of dreaming
are collected in clay pots.

Our thoughts are birds skittering
in the branches above the swirl.

Existence is the milky fish eyes
floating lifeless on the ocean’s surface.

Our kisses evaporate in the air,
not even dripping onto the
silent sea life nor sinking into the marl.

Our love is a bowl of feathers
waiting to form flight.

Until then are only meaning
waits in the icebox for the oven to warm.

Underwater, famished mermaids are eager to eat
the dreams and hopes of our sated angels.

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.

December 3, 2019

She was displayed before me
with her eyes closed
and mouth agape,
leaving me to wonder whether
she died in terror or awe.

Was her last breath
the honest gurgle
I’ve been seeing
for the last few days,
that I took comfort
in hearing restart
every time I called her name
between bouts of irregular apnea
(our last little private game)-
or the silence caused by Benadryl?

All I know is that
the call came at 6 am
and I spent one hour with her
and then walked into
the last of the darkness
and the first of the light.

My first breath outside the hospital
stretched back thirty years
and each tear was
full of joy and sorrow,
the ash of memory.

By the time I got home
the long movie
I had shared with her
was over.

January 3, 2020

Now, hope fails me.
Grief is my truth.
Yet, I refuse to be
deluded by grief
nor abandon hope
one month since
your passing.

Your death was your
greatest gift to me
and now I must struggle
with how to live with it
and accept it kindly
because in the end
you folded your life into my timeline,
fitting everything and all neatly
between my cancer and cure.

For 10,604 days-29 years, 12 days
I am grateful  for the
joy only you(I) can embrace
the sorrow
just only you(I)  can endure.

White and red roses
defend the mother’s coffin:
cherry stained,
her interlocked hands in prayer
draped in veil gauze,
her gold dress
the same she married in,
as the procession of her children
grieves in a black and white flow.

In a black and white flow,
each child lights a votive candle
that reflects the sanctuary lamp,
their tears and prayers—
hating themselves
for the gasping erasure inside,
the love not returned in time.

The love not returned in time
before the tears
of the blue ******
praying over her,
black hair
matching black hair,
alabaster hands
blessing burnt  
brown ones, anticipating
heaven’s restoration.

Anticipating heaven’s restoration
the congregation
steeple their hands and
chant for her dreams
to true,
her now
motherless children
to rise and stay united.

Rising and staying united
all her children
awkwardly cradle
their old gifted rosaries,
skipping Glory Be’s,
misremembering Our Fathers,
finally hiding in their tears
and the pale oval beads,

the pale ovals of their hands
buried in the vanilla scent
of candy florecitas
half mauled
in sugary communion,
their faith in confection
as strong as
believing their mother
would never die,

believing their dead mother  
would always protect them
even while the cancer within
ate her silence and resolve,
finally leaving them living
in a world of dollhouse sermons
and scented flowers with thorns,

scented flowers and thorns
and death marrying death,
matroning childhood,
life in its very pinkness,
child to mother to father

father to mother to child,
until night falls into blackness,
to black rot dusting
even lion and lamb,

lamb and lion
consecrated
to the last letter,

the last letter
of God’s tears,
the tears of now,

until now the tears
are nothing
but the chants of cries,

the song and chants of cries
born sober in the now
and the chant of tears

the tears of chants
and the children kneeling,
others kneeling,

kneeling others,
until there is
only the fall,

only the fall
of kneeling
in the now,

now in the fall
of kneeling
for love of each other

each other now in love,
or thinking they are in love
now with each other,

each other now in love,
knowing they are now in love
or soon will be.

From form  
vile evil
in the shade of hades
sire and rise
the lived devil,
the tornado donator
that is the heart of the earth.
God denying, dog hating,
it listens for silence, the license
to edit the tide to its whim
and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.

I tried to bargain away all
the sickness and death
in my life  with the
skies and mountains.
They refused to disperse my
pain in the sunlight and clouds.
The void rejected my life,
eternity denied my love.
The moon stayed its silent course
watching my fate fade away in the night.
Time denied my burden.
The wind swirled to heaven
seeing me coming near.
The waters cascaded away
fearing my touch.
God was on vacation
and not due back until
two days after my passing.
My heart opened wide
and I emptied my pain
on its breakers and shore
until all that was left was words,
these words in the color of clarity.

I wanted to tell the street,
the tar, the grass, the blue,
the morning you died.

The crows, the wasps,
the bees and butterflies
already knew.

The roots of the earth
did not embrace your ashes
nor did the sky,

just the wings that
soared in between the
sweetness, beauty, and grief.

I was wrong to believe this
world to be your only one
or that I would bloom in you.

Your life was a darker fruit
with rains that fell cold
with your sadness and tears.

I could neither make you happy
nor save you— just love where you
rooted and carry you when you fell.

I can neither eat the honey pollinated
in the knot of your stunted tree,
just endure the stings of coming grief,

nor dip my hand into the freezing creek
that floods your lonely roots
without losing my heart.

I just can weep, grieve, try to sleep
on the other side of the bank among
the broken reeds and mud.

Don’t take away my words
by not repeating my poems inside.
My poetry is revolutionary
as a floating feather.
Close your eyes and catch it
knowing the vision is in its flight
and not where it falls.  
Pick it up from the floor
and it becomes a Cobra
spitting, aiming to poison you.

I am scared, mommy
like I was in the summer storm
many months ago.
I tremble in my feet and hands
as I was in the deep puddle,
eyes open, screaming, shaking, mommy,
dark words want to come off my tongue.
Mommy, I am shaking as I come
down the stairs, light as a ghost.
Make me some milk, mommy
milk, if you see me there.

The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off  
their nuts, swallows and squirrels

upwards to a dark fearful sky
that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises
of the swirling winds.

Night breaks night—
smashing every compass point in impatience.
Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf
in mournful woe.

The wasp tail shears enter in breathing
a final winter to her old house.

Inside her chest the wind hornets sting her,
with the loneliness of the yet and not yet to be.

The sofa pillows fly down the stairs
saving her small barking dog ascending the dark.

She hears black birds caw to her in the chaos,
the bully air stabbing in sharp awe,
stabbing her aware.

She knows it now.  She sees the reason and agrees.

Writing poetry for me is like fishing in the wind:
You shoot your arrow-net into the air
and after many failures you snag an ugly bird
that you make beautiful the more you see
that it really resembles you.

Before it was lowered over
the broken city grid and
became my second house
it was a meadow where
the grasses grew tall.

I watched the top shell of earth
being moved and hauled away,
saw everything leveled to sand,
except a thick, distant  forest with a
thin stream that bled to the city park—

and did not shed a single tear.
All I knew that this was  my reward
for surviving sickness and storms,    
my final place to rest and settle my bones,
a place without a history of battles.

After the house’s first shudder and mud
had splashed my face did I know that the
soil always tasted of the slow dying of birds
who lived a long time in the air and bequeathed
their bones to the sky- flesh, blood to the dirt.
.

When your mother dies
you grieve,
vow to change,
say a prayer,
plant a memory tree.

When your father dies
you swallow hard,
set yourself square,
curse all his mistakes,
and seed an oak.

When your brother/sister dies
you cry
for the good times,
regret their bad ones,
carve their dreams in evergreens.


When your wife, husband, lover dies
you sunder and wail,
fumble for reunion,
finally settle enough
to sow a weeping willow.

When you die
the world will bury you
or spread your ashes
in the peace forest
you have mournfully grown.

Before audaciously
flying
in the strangled gleaming
of the last glory
of extinct clouds
rising
I asked my soul
what is the purpose
of having
the last thought
of mankind
or any
dreams
Oh Jinn
give back
the last of me
stolen and not yours

The Jinn replied
they blessed you
don’t you remember
or dreamed that you remember
it was that memory
of some things
and everything
that started your world
and ended this
and theirs
It started
and finished
just the way
you wished

She is the way they left her:
silent, shuttered, composed
amidst disarray,
the waiting chair unmoved,
her body draped in final coverings,
spider rays webbing the room,
the overhead light unused,
the bed sagging forever
in the center after this,
the sun fighting
with the weight of shadows
on her bedspread.
The corners of her room are dusty
crying from the lack of human nicety.
A tattered pain lives in the motes
that float to the floor,
bruises
of the past
that cannot heal in the present.
My hands are cut by the sharp edges
of a future I’m blind and deaf too.
I can only grasp futilely as the sun floats
away in the shadow play.
A faint trace of her voice
saying Jon, Jon, Jon
follows me out as I
struggle to lock the door.

There will be a time when God leaves you.
Maybe summer. Maybe winter.
The last thing he will say:
Keep searching.  Keep finding.
Seek me in the trash, the womb
lungs and heart.
He will leave you agape and stirring,
just a memory prayer
to say as the sun rises
and you wonder whether
winter or summer
has the holiest months.

Keep the things
you don’t understand
always near you-
in your pocket
or wallet-
so in idle moments
at the bus stop
or in line at the post office
at the bookstore
or coffeehouse
you’re thinking
until the inkling
of realization comes,
even if it’s
just a mark or two-
even if you have to
look it up in the dictionary
or on Wikipedia
or ask a smarter friend
or maybe even God
until you are certain
that you have
properly applied yourself.

--After Rainier Maria Rilke


The washers have lived with death
as they have with the lamp,
the flame and the  dark,
the nameless rinsing of limbs,
the even more unnameable nameless.
without histories relative to them.
Their sponges dipped the water
then the silent throat,
trickled rivulets on their faces,
waiting for it to absorb,
to convince themselves more than anything
that the body no longer thirsted.
They only stopped their toil
to turn their head to cough.
The older ones unclenched
the hands of the dead
that refused their final repose.
Only their shadows
****** the quiet walls,
the net of silent life
extinguishing to last existence
that ignored their shrugs
as the last now antiseptic corpse
was finished and the window shut.

The world is full of missing images and sounds.
In heaven the blind and deaf will meet:
one will show the other the pictures never seen,
the other will share the songs they never heard.
That is why, what and where, are part of
the essential questions every one asks.

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

Poetry can **** you
when you shut
yourself inside of it.

It doesn’t want you
looking for better words
in other poems.

It wants to cage you
to the corners
of a sheet of paper.

It doesn’t want you
to breathe the thing
it won’t allow.

It wants you to use
just enough imagination
to finish it and
throw the overflow away.

For the time you write it
it has its own imagination
that refuses to acknowledge
that yours exists.

Until it’s done
you are it’s prisoner.

Only then will it open up
and let you breathe,
let itself breathe.

The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Walk with me.  Fall with me.
Be the helmet light in the tunnel.
Hold my feet less I fall into the abyss.
Shackle your friends to you,
foot to foot, arm to arm.
The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Pull me from hell, while all the others
**** us to heaven’s salvation.

The light was so bad I made some clouds—
little cotton ***** taped to helium balloons
drifting up to the heavens.

The first were the standard balloon animals:
dogs, sheep, horses, giraffes, lions.

They folded conventionally but
became much more creative creatures
with more cotton piled on.
The orange poodle became a bison,
the sheep a yak, the horse a hippopotamus,
giraffes just puffier and more absurd giraffes,
the lions awesome saber tooth tigers.

I added man, men, woeful enough
that they needed a woman to tell them what to do.
Later I made the men sheep and the women lions.
I gave the dogs rabbit ears.
The sheep were now wolves.

I made the sky ark a canopy
to cover it from the dissolving sun,
a fluffy river to slack its thirst,
filled it with cotton candy gold fish
glittering bottle nose dolphins and ***** whales
echo locating each other’s existence,
populated its banks with palm trees and oaks
to shade all the other animals airy heads.

I created and created until the
creation created itself.
Lions became oaks,
sheep became mountains,
dogs became gods
wanting only attention
and belly rubs,
demanding all cloud creatures
know themselves only through
the smelling of each other’s *****.  

It rained the last of the rain,
the last bit of **** left in their bowels,
rained until they could only ****.  

I was irritated by the smell.
I was irritated by the noise.
I was irritated by how
they didn’t let me play my piano,
or continue creating my house
or not let me go to bed.  

I was locked in place
and couldn’t look back.

I wanted to cover my ears
but my hands were gone.
I wanted to cover my nose
but it had broken, fallen off
into a pillar of salt.

I shouted until someone
or something heard me
and covered my mouth
with a primate hand,
stopped my ears
with a canine paw.

Creation
had stopped my creation
knowing that I hadn’t been satisfied
with what I had done
that very first day
and needed a reset.

I am not a sailor.
I am meant to die on land,
ashes spread above sea level,
or in a coddled urn above the hearth.
My voice is paper and
where I choose to exist,
a white world that is not sky—
this voice of mine.
I have no ensign.
My heart beats soft, beautiful words,
a language of stars,
that knows that the twinkle
was once magnificent suns.

I thank life
by living
by praying

in stitches in the
midst of evergreens
aggravates- water

This crippled world
my every payer
of me— of you

For my reversal and recovery,
For my wife’s lost womb,
For a future free of cancers,
For the old brick house
toppled in the wolf tornado,
For the new cradle being
raised on an ancient cry of earth,
For the mothers who died
never seeing their children wed,
For rescued memories stuck on cardboard,
For dawning days of gray hair
and salt crusted smiles,
For all the altars yet to be built and crossed,
For all the twisted trees floating on rippled tides,
For all the roads, maps, stains and travails
that forged our life, created this prayer,
this hymn I sing.

Wait, I spoke
to the highest star.
It winked
and bowed to dawn.

Wait, I spoke to the low sun
that set.

Wait, moon.
It just glowed on,
gracing, gifting me with bright words. 

Wait, I spoke to my sad heart.
It beat as a heart does,
disobedient less it stop
trembling and just soon die.

Wait, to my brain
questioning all the high lights,
the bright horizon near,
all the lunatic noise.
They looked forth
changing faces, never silent, stopping.

Wait, I spoke to my love.
She answered,
Yes, heart.

Man has
a map of the galaxy
for his body,
a map of his genes
that are his universe.
He has
a defense or attack
for every chess move
housed in Watson’s memory.
But precious of all,
he has
the ability to
grow crops,
to put water in the
hands of the thirsty,
to make
the right screws
to fit the peace machine
that makes our
better angels fly.

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

The tears fade in
the screaming inside howling brick.
It is our cancer
swirling around,
stone, flesh and home.
Our history is in its eye,
our profile in this wild night of carnage
slouching towards mornings. We turn
away and the brick frees us.
We turn back and are inside
our granite selves forming in the sculpting wind,
erring in the perfect sad light,
different, broken-whole.
Our names are erased from brick,
letters spreading like smoke
in the all defining wind.
It drops in the field of its birth,
a flash in the silent mud and clay.
It shimmers on my wife’s white blouse,
and when she walks away,
settles in memory.
The wind chisels a robin
falling, dying in my stare.
The cloud of my neighbor
floats towards me, pale eyes
trying to define me
but I am not a window.
Her face is lost in the brick
and the wind erases her,
the street, their signs,
the names of those in houses behind.

I’m gentle with the spaces
I know and walk through.

Every door knobs has fingerprints.
The dust and air is full of ghosts,

I make them free not by removing them but
tidying them up into their own wandering space,

letting them tell their stories so I can joyously
tell mine in the right place, time and words.  

I free myself to the opportunity they provide me.
I am loyal to them and they to me.  

The other day I heard my mother speak to
me in a frame of film, a pixel flashing by.

”I love it.  Love, love, love it!”, she said
to everything she touched and adored.  

My wife was wondering why I was just
sitting there smiling and writing.  

“I don’t care. I love it! I love it, too!” I replied
to the life that created me and lives I will create.

I have done the work of gathering, curating, loving.
I am close, closer to finally  getting it right!

He knows how to observe the heron
in the twilight’s lonely inclusion-
this blue dream that could vanish
in flight if drawn too near—
head, eyes, ears pulled forward
following the flow of fish ahead
until it vanishes from his sight
behind a screen of slender reeds.