Why do I write?
This you ask me.

These things you should ask:

Why did my father hate,
Spew spiteful slander over dinner,
So often erupt in rage,
Hammer, pound me
With words like nails,
Make me small,
Frightened always.
Ask the size of his belt,
The feel of his fingers
At my throat.

Ask why Mother
So often confided
I shamed her,
Embarrassed her.
Ask why,
When women came
For cards, drink and laughter,
I hid beneath my bed,
Stopped up my ears
Against their cackles
Down the hall.

Why do I write?

Ask why the Sufis found me,
Why in traveled towns
Bookstores bade me enter,
Where the sweet scent of baraka
Would lead to a single perfect text
Upon a shelf.

Ask the purpose of
My existence.
Sufis suggest
We were given Life
Such that through our eyes
The Creator may view
The beauty of all she created.

Then ask why I write.

Ask
What is family?
My entire life
I have searched for such
To call my own.
You, you are family.
Am I not like you,
You like me,
Awake in the Night
Fitting words
Here, there and there,
Fitting pieces of life to a page,
Hoping to fit  beauty
To one another’s hearts.

Now ask why I write.

I write for myself.
I write for you.
I write for God.

Let me make beauty
Let me be beauty
Let me know your beauty

You are my moon

Your moods wax and wane
With pages torn from my calendar

Your beauty not constant
Bewitching at your fullest
When you reflect upon me
The light of others
No heart shine of your own

The days vary
Each I long for nights
When your pull
Upon my tide of blood
Raises it up
To wash my mind’s shores
With foaming scour
Majestic power
Leaving my morn strewn with
A drift of storm wrecked feel

But those moods!
When you wrap yourself in cloud
Hide for days
On end, until
I wish to kneel in desert sands
Beneath, before another moon
Constant

Memories are like snowflakes
So fragile
Each unique
So easily destroyed
Especially those of Love

Hate not so much

I have a thousand
Upon a thousand
Snowflakes of you
I have kept them in the darkest
Coldest corner of my heart
Where they have never melted
Never will

Deep bellows roll ashore,
Climb the hill and spill from
The Bowl that is our little town.

Their charts crossed
In deep of night,
Still lost to fog
In morning light,
China clippers headed south,
Commerce stacked from deck to skies,
East/West ferries packed with souls,
All ships boom out warning cries,
For maritime fools are sure to be
Lost to port, who cannot see,
Without radar wandering,
Sailing on our Salish Sea.

No little cat feet here,
This  invasion from the sea
A thousand ninjas, maybe more,
A racing horde of cloud,
Blimey the milkman swore
The only warning heard aloud
As these chilling shrouds of fog
Climb the hill and spill from
The Bowl that is our little town.

I sit in candlelight,
Old, sad ballads
On my turntable,
Thinking of you,
Writing of us,
Playing the pathetic lonely artist
In his garret.

We were watching Disney when
You ran into the night
Never to return.

No longer mine,
I guess you never were.

My glass holds 
A measure of gin
That never measures drowning
The measure of my loss
From your two feet
Out the door.

A first date,
I held open for you
The door of my Chevy.
You held open not only 
The door to your heart
But to your family,
The only I was ever to have.
As one new to love
I loved them,
Sure even now
They loved me too.

Do I need tell
How I loved you?

My daughter walks 
The backstreets of my heart
But will never walk the Earth,
For life denied me children
While you treasure a daughter
With another man.

Like a drowned man 
Drug ashore,
I thought all memories 
Of our life together
Dead.
But like a lifeguard’s hands
Those letters
Brought them back to life
In a mighty gasp,
******* in joy,
Coughing, spewing sorrow.

I cannot hate you.
Tell me
Please 
How to live 
With loving you
Still and Forever,
You I never,
You still 
I may not have.

I watch,
For I am you
And you are me.

I watch.
I dive, I surface,
I spin the horizon round,
Yet round again. Sky wide
I stretch my arms, my eyes,
My very Heart for you.

I watch.
I know your pain,
The tattered, little scraps
Of memory, the
Longing, oh God
The longing for our long lost
Home.
Did we not polish our hearts
To sacred chalice,
Pray and sing
Each ancient chant?
Now,
Like sounding whales
We stink of sorrow.

I watch.
I know the moments
Fierce yearning gnaws the gut.
Walking sticks you gather,
Wind and water silvered,
Wood turned twin to
Our own bones of stone.

I watch,
Let loose a tear.
You check your pouch of Medicine,
Your hoard of magic words.
There are fallen stars For Beauty and for Light,
Shark teeth and lobster claw
For cutting and for pain.

I watch.
The ceaseless longing
Pulls you from the Sea.
You climb the sands,
Climb from sight,
My wandering pilgrim
Leaving sacred word pagodas
Upon the foreign land.

I watch.
This day do not die into the Night
That passes into Light.
Return to me,
Return to us.
We are all but little waves
Rising and falling in and out of
That great ocean of all,
That ocean of Love,
The One.

Return Adriana.
I am you.
You are me.
I will touch your hair and
Whisper in your ear.

I will sing to you like Orca.

We are Light
Gathered and bound
In water and salt.

Once
I loved a woman,
Traced Andromeda
In the curve of her ear,
Counted stars
On her freckled face.
I took delight in her smells,
The desert of her hair,
Ocean below,
Her sometimes pungent embrace.
Her hungry mouth
Held our love of garlic.
I gave tongue to worship at her lunar altar.
While our toes mingled,
Fingers entwined,
We spoke into the night.

How could I not know of God?