YOUR LOVE IS THE WIND

Your love
is the wind

that passes
through trees

sets them murmuring
to themselves

the secrets of my heart

or the wind
in wheat

undulating across
fields

a golden sea
as if alive

moved
(moving me)    

your love
the wind

that takes
my heart

tosses it
in the air

& laughs
laughs

as it scampers
here & there

at your
slightest whim

until
like a leaf

it lies

settled
quiet & still

becalmed
on your palm

overcome
with tenderness.

"...TO MAKE MUSIC THAT WILL MELT THE STARS..."
( For Ray of the Pools )

So, here we are
in Flaubert's garden

as if he has just
gone in and

will be back
in a moment.

We wait for him
to return

chat amongst
ourselves

intimate
with his very thought

having travelled
through his mind

and not mere
summer tourists.

We feeling we have
just stepped out from

a time machine and
a servant informs us

we have just missed the master
who had been called away.

We pass his photograph
with his melancholy gaze

"...it seems to me,,,"
it whispers as we past

"...that the rain is falling
through my heart...

,,,causing it to crumble into ruins.”

We return to his rooms
the mummified heads

stare back at us
through glass

screaming silently
"We were once like you!"

A fly argues
with a window pane

much as it did
a hundred years ago

time lost
between the tick and the tock

but now the sunlight
grows old

and outside the 21st century
awaits

angry at our escape
into another time.

I shush it
with a wave of my hand

“There is not a particle of life
I tell it

...which does not bear poetry within it”

ALZHEIMER'S ZONG

'The soul bone's
connected to the heart bone! '

'The heart bone's
connected to the mind bone! '

'The mind bone's
connected to the bone bone! '

'The bone bone's
connected to the thought bone! '

'The Thought bone's
connected to the Time bone! '

'The Time bone's
connected to the memory bone! '

'The memory bone's...'

'The memory bones...'

'... memory's bones...'

'Now where have all
the words

...gone! '

THE VOICE

Even the trees
fell quiet

the leaves
ceased to chatter

amongst themselves
the birds refused to speak

It was as if
the world had evaporated.

"So..." said the Silence
at last you hear

my voice."

A BLACKBIRD CHIPS AWAY AT IT

here on the shore
of your death
only time between us

remember walking with you
in the last century
this century I walk alone

Time lends me sleep...dreams
I conspire to meet you there
together we outwit death

I assault the world
with my grief
embarrassed it turns away

the world
not big enough
to contain your death

I am bound
in a nutshell
even grief tires of me

happiness hurts
even for daring
just to be there

I don't forget you
I just can't
remember you as you are

happiness shushes me
"Hush...hush!" it soothes
my guilty tears

an invincible sky
frozen silence
a blackbird chips away at it

"'TWAS THEN THE TIME...WE WERE IN THE DAYS"

His head full
of Irish myth.

The here & there
of this & that

bits that stick
in the mind

for as long as
forever is.

Sticky backs hitching
a ride on a boy's blue jumper.

This the emotional
archeology of me

sifting what's left
of times

long long gone by
in the time of his own

long long gone byes.

A winter of '63.

That 67-ish summer.

An Easter
that brought death.

There was a woman
(was there a woman?)

turned into a pool
turned into a fly
blown away by a wind

her name eroded
by a sea of time.

And the legendary heroes
like little boys

building a snowman
that would be the biggest

of the biggest
and

that the women would
compete to see

who could ***
furtherest through this

man of snow.

Some things are
not made

. . .to forget.

Oh such
artifacts of thoughts!

Such shards of stories
come back

to see what
kind of man

the little boy
would become.

He smiles as he remembers
& un-remembers

the such
of such

the unforgettable
calling to him

in mythic voices
the tallest tales

still easier
to resurrect

that his time
of 9

when he was going on
10.

ITS OWN GOOD SELF

no God just
the sweet rain blesses me
with its own good self

a robin
unaware
that he's my prayer

the miracle of sunlight
playing
with a kitten

wind sings
in a choir
of trees