Don’t run away  -  open your heart
like a door and welcome in the night
with all her peculiar baggage.       Listen
                                                                   to the haunting cadence of crickets,
                                                                   how the moon pulls slender notes
                                                                   from their wings as she pulls shivering
                                                                   waves from the sea.
                            They sing of freedom.
They sing:      Release
                            all those memories you’ve trapped
                            like fireflies in mason jars - you ask
                            too much of those tiny flashes, expecting
                            them to guide you.       Stop
                                                                          trying to preserve
                                                                          their light   -  their beauty
                                                                                                      exists only
                                                                                                      in darkness.
Hear the promise of sunrise
in the crickets’ song.

The world looks different
when you always keep your head down -
I've studied all the oddities of my feet,
the details on your shoes,
the patterns in the carpet.
I've learned how to dance
without stepping on your toes,
and how to sing without raising
my voice above a sigh.
How to glide over the surface of things.
Perhaps I will never see sky
with my eyes glued to the floor,
but I'll be the first to know
when the bottom drops out from under us.
And then there are words fastened
to my tongue that will never feel their syllables
shudder in the cool breeze of candor.
Here's a question I won't release:
how high can you build something
on a foundation of eggshells?
The elephant in the room
is already cracking
                the stark
                    white
                       veneer.

It’s always a story of hearts
caged in bone, and how they
converse between bars like branches

of weeping willows. It begins when
they pull out their dusty dictionaries
and redefine themselves so their names

become synonyms, and how they flip
their pencils over to press pink
erasers against yellowed pages,

to rub out the line dividing reality
and daydream.  Next comes a ceaseless
cycle of rise and fall, and how lungs

methodically beat themselves against
chest walls with every sustaining breath.
Then it’s an abrupt lurch of

limbs, and how feet must find
new anchor when the rug is pulled out
from beneath them. It seldom ends

at happily ever after,
and most stories never bubble
over into the easy resolution

of *epilogue.

When all we had to show from
several sunlit days
was skin burned red from heat
we learned to avoid the light,
learned that freedom breathes
in darkness, where shadows cloak
secrets and we become blinded
by anything beyond this warmth
of togetherness.  Light limps
toward us in the demands of dawn
so we hide beneath the shade
of trees, and in the rustling of branches
during storm the wind sends her message,
barely a sigh in the rumbling thunder
but something about white flags
and the closing of curtains.
But I won't surrender, for in nightfall
I've discovered that I don't need
candles or stars
when I have the glow of your eyes.

But while life whittles us down, he also
carves lessons in riddles on twigs we then
collect in baskets woven from love’s loose
ends.  Like how to wrap arms around a memory.
Or how to keep the flaws in the self-portrait,
even when the world tells us to paint them out.
And how to love the way the air smells when
the rain stops, or how puddles reflect rainbows
when the sun shines.  Or how to cross the
bridges we would rather jump off.  And
when sorrow weighs down pockets like
loose change, how to toss each teardrop
in the wish of a penny in a fountain.  And how to
recognize that no matter how much we give
to the world, we must not take for granted
that we deserve anything in return.

These are the moments when I marvel
at the way darkness reinvents itself
in shadows that move with moonlight
across these walls.  In this gentle hum
of white noise the promises of dreams
unravel in a ribbon of whispered syllables,
and with eyes straining toward forever
I can see the contrast between what I am
and what I could be beyond the stillness
of this room.  There are questions marks
that hang in the margins - their plea:
Let me be something more than what I am
in these hollow hours filled with not knowing
what I am waiting for.  Let me grow
into this heart and everything it holds inside.

for T

On the first day of summer
we swam naked in the carefree sunrise,
pioneer beams of light shimmering

reflections on still water. It was
barely 6AM and the park sign read *closed
so we hopped the fence

and bounded barefoot through the trees.
Then with our clothes we shed our inhibitions, too
drunk on cheap gin and stifled laughter

to care.  Too content to feel self-
conscious.  Wading peacefully in the humming
heat of the dawning season,

you asked me how I felt -
and for the first time in months I could smile
and answer happy, and answer honestly.