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Dec 2020 · 123
How long does art take?
Her painting took seconds
of movement.
His symphony took one week
of bipolar mania.
Poems take anywhere
from a minute to a lifetime
of writing.

Time is one thing, and
struggle is another
to put a price on.

Yes, there are masterpieces
that will never see
a showroom wall.
Yes, there are scribbles
hanging on those of the Louvre.
Yes, both hold life,
both hold salvation.
Dec 2020 · 267
After Reading Dickinson
Through a window high above the concrete,
you can hear the birds singing.
It’s an acapella symphony,
chirps like violins carved into trees.

Hope clutters the sky
It reaches as high as it can
towards the sun
Hope has learned to fly,
to belong to something bigger than anyone can see.
God does not keep hope in a cage
in his living room.
Hope is a messenger,
reminding the earth
that it is made of,
that it is because
of love.

When I saw the way your eyes shined,
the birdsong came in
through my heart’s open window.
It was like the summer sky had come down,
was knocking at my door,
inviting me to dance barefoot
across hot pavement.
I longed to fall in love
with the flutter
of a butterfly’s wings
and the shape
of every flower.

You were something like hope.
Like you had looked it in the eye
and decided the whole world
needed to know.
Aug 2020 · 122
regret
only after the mountains
have moved
and the wind has run
its course through the sands
only after things have changed,
the world made new
only then do I remember
what I never gave myself
permission to do
so I long to go back
to be braver
to let myself love you
As I stare at the verses,
I must seem so still.
She casts a web
from where she sits
and I smile,
but knowingly,
lower her body
down to the table.
She scatters again towards
the page I have just
turned and together we
weep for beauty
Aug 2020 · 221
Butterscotch
what the cat understands
whether he knows that he understands it
or not is that in everything
there can be newness

I do not know when he does most
of his sleeping,
but I watch each morning
as he greets the house,
lifting his nose up to everything
familiar in order to remember
where he is

he traces each surface
with his paws
wanders around and around
until he lays and falls
asleep, then again
waking with the same
dedication to discovery

he sits in the same windowsill
every day, looking out
at the same things,
concerning himself only
with the present
Aug 2020 · 332
Sunrise
Something pulls my eyes
up up up and around.
What vision of the world reflects
off my eyes?
So I recognize the smallness
of my life under a sky
that I can’t run towards the end of,
and also, the magnitude
of being under that same sky,
as it opens from all sides
to reveal the color
of morning.

— The End —