She said to me, at 3 am, that I wasn’t over it,
that I’d not truly forgiven, not even myself,
because I still remembered the details
of what I thought I needed to forgive.....
With that, she sent me to my bed, told me
it was late, and it was, and so I slept,
and dreamt of starlit seas and oceans of them above
No clear horizons between them, separate still they remained,
with no reason for one to resent the other's beauty
When I awoke, to late summer sun so warm,
I wondered, that I couldn't think of why....
Why she'd so rarely cried in front of me
And then I let the thought, the tattered, misty thought,
scatter in wispy tendrils into oblivion, burning away cleanly,
like the last, ragged bits of an early morning fog

What I want to say to you,
I've done in so many tongues,
my native one terrified of hope....
Languages at my beck and call,
frivolous reminders that I'm nobody
of importance, except perhaps
when you look at me, when you turn
your faerie eyes my way, I tremble,
consumed by senses I knew not to exist
just yesterday, yet now I find my self-
importance laid waste, I'm just a silly
bard, singing silly rhymes, and then,
and only then, I know I have to sing
my silly verses with respect, for that
is how I want you to hear them

I was given, at my first birthday party,
a gift sublime, a lovely, lush garden
I played among its fonts and flowers,
traded baseball cards with Atlas and Athena,
rolled in high grass with iridescent dragons

Then one fine day through leaflets high,
I spied a fat juicy fig, haloed by Summer sun
The tree was poison, I knew, its sweet fruit
most likely bad as well, but in my arrogance
I climbed the trunk, got tangled in its branches

I lost control, lost something never truly held,
and fell, through viney snarls and vicious thorns
Fell farther than I ever rose, to putrid death,
moldered slime beneath the canopy
of verdant paradise on gentle hillside above

I crawled about in mud and earthen warrens
Slowly, year by year, learned to walk again
But arrogant I remained—had not my
lesson learned, and so I doubled-down,
made mockery of this chance for redemption

All the sweet virgins did I ****, and teach
our children sin, in crystalline waters
I did shat on mulched fields, amber and green,
with cigarette butts and baggies blowing
listless on Autumn winds

When Winter finally came, as winters must,
to **** off weakened souls, and make
the garden ready for new attendants,
I did not learn, I did not take the blame...
It's Him, I cried, I have not power to do this!

But then my youngest daughter sobbed
She watched, sadly, out clouded, grimy windows
and, looking up at my limpid, sullen eyes
crawled into my arms one last, lonely time
to face what I could not...

Behold, the Silent Spring

You called to me within your dreams...
I came to you from other times,
jumped lightly down from far off hills
to moving paths of spectral light, swam
brave 'gainst currents swift and yet,
can't make this final leap to Now

I speak to you each night in sleep...
You wouldn't know my voice, but
hearing yours like one's own heart
beat cadence in two rhythms
Can't you yet feel the throb, shifting
mountains deep within the Earth

All you need do is touch my past...
Blend mine with yours in kindness
One swift kiss becomes a torrent,
and suddenly I'm real as dawn,
no longer trapped in shadowlands,
and so like this you're freed from Yours

What may be this stormy brilliance
come upon my weary watch
Oh what fresh'ning wind befall me
on this perilous small yacht

Shall I shelter in calm harbors,
set a course for un-adventure,
reef my sails, take in the main,
keep it safe for my debenture

Or is mine the priceless treasure
on some island beach I'll find,
if I rig my weather mainsail,
and prepare my boat for rime

Set the genoa to run out,
shift my rudder to the force,
let the weather take a free turn,
let the helmsman plot the course

So be still my racing heartbeat,
be thee calm my apprehension,
give me over to these winds that blow,
it could only cost pretension