Such a mundane thing
To walk through a door
Yet you are there
On the other side, smiling,
And we are already making
Memories and pressing them
      into our pages --

We laugh at saying the same
Word at once: zinfandel
And I feel a beginning
Coming toward me --

In our first goodbye kiss
That night was a telling, sublime,
Beyond our lips and our stories
That cocooned us in that moment
      and spun love's possibility
Under approving December skies --

I once wrote a list of things
That represented me :

Smoke from a discarded cigarette,
Rain on the Ocean,
A saturday matinee.

I wrote that I was a penny
On a train track, waiting.

             ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Well guess what, folks-
The engine  has arrivd.
        ljm

How does a poet leave this world?
Does she quietly lay down her pen,
Tidy her desk, stack the sheafs of paper,
Turn off her lamp and say

Goodbye to her dreams and conceits,
To morning walks along the salt marshes,
Keeping company with herons
        and wild geese,

Where
        she entered her church in the woods
And emerged with poems of the ineffable,
Told through the perfection of fox and rabbit
And dawn's shimmer-mist just above the water;
Told through the unabashed mystery of life --

What the poet put down is now relinquished.
Yet it is her heart
Her heart still
That beats in every line --

Soon
Autumn's grand parade will clamor
      through the streets
Drumbeats
Chilly harvest of marching bands
      and hayrides
      The ebbing tides
of long days
Confetti blown from reluctant trees
Fluttering ochres and rocketing rubies
As nature lets the clock run out

Blow summer a sweet kiss goodbye --

It is September Eleven.
The Survivor Tree speaks:
                Remember --

Every year the chaos
      of that day comes fresh again.
The disconnect
      of sheer helplessness
As we gathered around televisions
To watch people dying and
      giant debris clouds billowing
      through Manhattan.
Those images of victims running away
Covered in choking white dust
Burned into our collective psyche,
Feeling so ashamed to be human.
Then in the aftermath,
So proud to be human --

We always find our redemption