Carl didn't finish school,
Preferring to work on my father's farm
Breathing prairie dust and smoke,
Seeing suns rise and fall,
Living in the weather,
Freezing or sweating to the season,
Reading the wind,
Cursing the heat and migraines.

Smoking Salem cigarettes
Alone in his bunkhouse,
He never mentioned his regrets;
Three meals a day with us,
A car or truck demanding payments
Kept him coming back to work

The draft cards came;
Vietnam called;
Neighbors left,
But Carl stayed.

One day I barraged him,
"Why didn't you finish school?"
"Why weren't you drafted?"
"Are you going to marry?"

"I can't," his reply.

I asked why.

"Because I tested border-line *****."

Just 10, I had no idea what "*****" meant,
Had never heard Stanford-Binet,
Didn't realize the power of labels.

Now I do.

When authorities mis-measure
The capacities of a man,
When labels shackle,
We fail to see or know
Imago Dei before us.

We didn't stop to think
What gifts he had,
Nor did we see the perfection
Of his creations on his bunkhouse table:
Perfect miniatures of our farm machinery:
Tractors, cultivators, harvesters,
Cut from plastic and metal stock,
Measured intricately to scale,
Fitted with loving care,
Glued and painted,
Complete and ready
For some small-minded man
To drive into a miniature field.

It is cold outside
as winter overtakes fall
the room has a chill
but then sipping my coffee
the rich brown liquid takes hold of me
and the fields of a foreign land
gather in my mouth
I hear the shouts and laughter
of the workers harvesting the beans
I poke my finger into the soil
and Earth fills me with gratitude
for its fruits
and its glorious life.

Ah! Nothing like hot coffee in the morning.
I sigh. I smile. Life is good here now.

Golden

Two blocks away
between the houses
the sunset smolders golden
through an oak

Cold creeps behind it

The infantile moon
With its smile of mischief
just short of malice
among the waves she drags along behind
A single diamond
glittering
in her navel
below

The rest of her
left
to the black sky
of my imagination

Clouds streak the
setting sun’s radiance,
like waves, like feathers
bowing leftward. A soft
rain falls, a breeze blows
gently from the west.
And from me the sound
of pipes, of words and
exultation, lamentation.
It is in me that the sunset
is exulted. It is in me that
the border of the blue and
purple is seen, the amber
of the center. Around me
the gloaming is falling.
I see, and am whole. I live,
and am not fractured.
This is evening.
This is evening.

Within a single moment
An overflow of deterioration
Causes time to stop and ponder;
A single instance in time
where all that exists is inverted
and silence finally reigns once more.

I was hoping for sun
to brighten my mood
and wake me up this day.

But shades of gray
hang heavy on the horizon
ground wet from last night’s rain.

That’s life.

I remember my days of black and white
easy answers cut and dry, clear and bright
lines dark and sure
with me of refined mind
up on ground moral and high.

But I have become fond of gray
where friends with their faults
and me with mine stay
in love anyway.

Give me lowly, mushy earth
where seeds break open
with verdant birth.

Yes, please give me a day
with shades of gray.

his lips taste like rapture unguaranteed
and love me so softly that i wonder if i'm free
but lately i conjecture, lately i still see
on late october nights - your face in that debris
(all we are now
is remnants in the sea
all we are now is a raging
memory)

Peering into the looking glass
Reflection, refraction
Dividing my face into quadrants
One side droops while the other stoops
Incongruent with my own race
Do I feel human today?
Or is the feeling returning?
Looking into the mirror
Why can I not recognize this face?
Two opposites in one, rabbit and cobra
Fierce but gentle, violent yet parental
Two halves in one whole
Yet, the pieces don't fit.

My sisters and I jest
That men never get over us.
We have been named
Muses, angels, succubi, leanan sidhe
But we are les belles dames avec merci
And that is their undoing.
Our breath has left them gasping
With unfilled lungs
We never meant to be their oxygen
But they drink us in like drowning men.

We didn’t ask for this,
But disarming, we are soft enough
For them to float in
Belly up, eyes to distant stars
Singing the sirens song that stirs in our veins.

Behind our teeth rests the love
The world has failed to give them till now
There are holds in the knowledge
that our fingertips find the hollowed spaces,
mother wounds, clefts where trust was carved out,
And they clutch our palms to staunch the bleeding.

We never asked for this,
They cherish the brittle changelings of us
until they are crushed in the coals of our eyes
Eggshell ideals, fragile as egos.
Blown by the sea wind in the strands of our hair
they are scattered, undone.

The distance drifts between, inevitable
And full they turn away to starve
We cut the mooring line
After one too many storms,
And search
For safer
Harbor.