Flesh covers our bones
But reveals our movements
Two hands clasp a leash
Where a blonde puppy sits
Underneath a picnic table
And a baby dressed in white
Crawls across the wet
Green grass
The soul is an entirely different story
Most people imagine a transparent
Sphere or a box of golden liquid
Or an angel dressed in white
Or a ghost hidden beneath a cage of bones
A prison
But I’d like to imagine a separate being
As real as the people sitting in the grass
In a circle maybe not even one person
Maybe several strangers
Of different age groups, children, men
Women, Grandfather and Grandmother
That’s the perfect scenario, a heap of bones
Twisted together in unison over time
But then the rain falls in a drape
Around the oak tree, it’s like an
Umbrella
Reality sets in -- the soul is nothing more
Than what you see -- a young man
Sitting on a stool in front of the coffee shop
Blond hair blue eyes
His hand trembling as he lifts the cup to his mouth
His blood boils, his flesh turns ruddy
The rain falls ridiculously from a grey sky.

Underneath the cedar’s in the green grass
The orange cat spreads her bones a certain way
And every so often lifts her stout head
To see the people coming and going

To her the clouds take on the shape of fish
Swimming lazily in a shallow pond
Her body stalking silently the shore
Never letting her shadow reach the sky

The lull of the afternoon is immense
And the mourning doves gather on wires
Cooing every so often to make sure
The day does not slip away unnoticed

The lighthouse rises above the cedars
Rises above and into the ocean
Stretching its neck in anticipation
For the first hint of a gliding white sail

Now she departs that tangerine flower
Stalking ghost-like paw after silent paw
Strutting instinctively toward the water
Vanishing in the reeds which disclose her

The clouds drape across the waning evening
The sky turns blonde to pink to purple
The light from above shines the horizon
The soul escapes the body once again.

The wind blows my ***
Towards my shins;
Salty breeze you joke!

The third time I opened my eyes I began to cry
Midnight ferry ride silver full moon
Over black waves
A feeling beyond death
Following the blinking red lights
Letting the tears gather slowly

The white gulls diving like stars tumbling
From the cold cloudless night
(A father a mother and a daughter)
Her first boat ride ever
Perhaps the mystery of life exposed
Blonde hair blowing in the salty breeze
Her eyes open as wide as the Atlantic
--And to think in no time
She will be safe asleep in a warm bed
Dreaming of a thousand things to come.

This is all I can do to keep my thoughts straight
Ride midnight ferries to abandoned islands
Grey salty Atlantic silver rimmed islands
Where cars disappear into the frothy abyss
Where the newly paved roads lead to nowhere
But the blusterous sea where all is forgiven
And forgotten.

I make a new circle with my mind
I have been here before but in a dream
I can remember the fluidity of the waves
The sand rolling across the rusty grasses
The seagulls screaming like children
The lull of a salty afternoon sapphire
In the shade of the live oak
Disappearing in the reality of waking
My eyes open slowly to something familiar
But now I am here on the beach, in flesh
Standing before an immense possibility
At the edge of a venerable beginning
With the sun setting over the watery brim
With the breeze rolling through the trees
My feet rested in the sand apathetically
Looking out over Pamlico Sound with wild eyes
Trying quickly to grasp what it is, its meaning
Its mystery before it fades away and slips
Into obscurity forever.

I will one day become an ocean
And those that wish will come before me
And throw their troubles in my vastness
And pray their sorrows to my moons.

--I will soon become an answer
As silent as the evening sun
As changing as the seasons done
And bolder than the question.

It was first a dark blue rattling
As dark as the deep ocean
Then turning brighter brighter
Creating silhouettes of the forest
--The birth of day stretches
In layered colors of silent waves
Now a sort of white pushing up
Like an angry fist piercing the sky
Breaking the shore finally
An orange layer pink to the south
Saturates the horizon and grunts and moans
The weight of a million years
The gravity of love turning and twisting

I’ve had this memory before.

--The bird wakes from the night
Without thought takes flight
Wings outstretched to the west
Upward and over the mountain goes.

--To a peaceful sunrise August 17th 2012--