Lets plan a trip to mars..
Terraform all its scars..
Make it liveable for us all..
Change the red star blue..

Lets build a vessel that can take us there..
By the hundreds or by the thousands..
A new planet for us to share..

All this amazing effort for an elsewhere far from here..
If we are willing to do such colossal efforts..
Why don't we do it to the planet we already have here..

E A R T H: It can be saved...

Small pond under the tree
dark, deep
filled with rainwater
and relief

One frog
only one
has made it home
Resting in the soupy duck ****
by a fallen branch
in muck of rotting leaves

Floating

Isolated

in quiet of the green

A queen

Does not call for mate
as if she knows
they are not listening

Having found the ones they need
...and so she
being so different
in her view
of on/off fireflies
by night
off
on
always
in their searching of July

Like days
...of goldfinches
with cursive flight
that sweep the day in loopy strokes
that mirror close their seeking song

Frog has found
...Peace
can be so precious

You wrap a bow around the present. Every moment with you is a gift. So here is my heart. I don't care the risk. I am yours in every sense.

A long time ago I tried to write
A love poem to a girl of my dreams.
I was burning and I was burning
For her. Instead, it seems

I wrote something about amnesia
And forgetting how to feel.
I wanted to win a dark mistress’s heart
Only the burning was real.

Or a different story:
The gulf between objects and desire.
Like the soul in Emerson’s tale,
We can never touch our beloved with fire.

Or loss. A long-legged beauty
Disappeared into echoes that I can’t explain.
Still burning with thirst
I wrote about ashes and pain.

Then I met you on a blooming campus path.
You had sinewy curves and a powerful flame
In your eyes that left me burning
To give your pleasure a secret name.

But it turned into a different plot.
You told me I set something inside you free.
It was new and I was still learning.
I told you, “Come burn with me.”

I think I know what the problem was.
I needed to learn a language from you,
The wordless speech that tongue teaches tongue,
Eye glints to eye, that skin lets through.

And our bodies coiled together
And your brown skin and my pale skin
Entangled in the heat of unity.
The burning flowed from outside to in.

There has to be a word for this,
Something enduring, strong.
Come close, I’ll try to whisper it.
Though I might get it wrong.