Dry worn out earth
Brown like the mud
The path is layered with you
Paved by the thousands of nature seekers hoping to find some sort of peace.
The scents of pine, spruce, aspen, dirt and mold cling to my skin and hair.
You’ll linger long after I’ve left this place.
Following me to my car, my home, and eventually my bed.
At some point, I will shower
And there we will part.
You’ll detach yourself from my skin and hair
And travel into a dark, wet world
Snaking beneath my feet.
I will emerge, as I did a newborn,
Wet and naked
But I won’t forget you
And will soon return to where we met.
And once more I will tread on top of the dry worn out earth
Brown like the mud.

Hollow out my mind like soft earth
after a season of rain,
and bring forward the dancing moon in reticence.

And let the steps beneath charred forest left behind,
bring fortitude in thought.
To help love what is and release what is not.

I saw you in all things soft and beautiful,
For your eyes were my eyes,
And my hands, yours.

Blurred images on the surface of a stream,
Laughing children, flapping sails,
hillsides of moss and vines and huts of stone.

Drifting hopes became my castle,
Kept warm by my sanguine queen.

In a different life,
the cold, coarse granite that separates us
Is nothing but atoms,

There, things are different.
The blade is used only in the kitchen,
And our hearts remain intact.

There, we are brave,
Our greatest fears tested and overcome long ago.
There as it always was, your smile is my smile, and my strength is yours.

Goodnight sweet juniper,
Let the moon kiss you slowly across the sky.
Return to your dreams and find my soul from lifetimes long past.

You can find me standing beneath the pinyon in the sand,
I’ll wait for you there.
Where nothing and no one else exist,
And time expands with every breath.

Tread softly as you walk among the manzanita,
Its red bark echoing of blood and life.
Its roots stretching deeper than you know,
And its leaves brushing you softly,
Whispering your secrets, ushering your fate.

Take your solace in the sagebrush,
Its sharp scent hitchhiking on the northern breeze,
as the dirt green stubble extends farther than the hills,
and farther than the red cliffs and thirsty desert.
Smile as you sleep, and let the moon kiss you slowly across the sky.
Goodnight sweet juniper.

She snored softly as the rain came down,
Intent to absorb the peace of every drop against the window.
Red Mercury, blue Venus and white Betelgeuse joined us through the glass.
She chuckled and returned to snoring, a wonderful dream perhaps.

My chest tightens when I think of you
and how beautiful you were when we first sat under the oak in the dim light of the streetlamp.
My fingers can still feel the way yours clasped so effortlessly into their gaps as we ambled along,
euphoric and in awe at what we found together.
My heart belongs to you, still refusing to accept what my eyes have seen,
that you betrayed me, deceived me, and left nothing sacred for you and I.
My soul hangs above me,
sodden and bowed, threatening to collapse from the weight of this terrible dream.

Please wake me up, my love,
And kiss me in the morning dew that has crept in through your window.
Tell me none of it is real,
And let me hold you tight as we make love while the sun smiles down on us.

Stale yellow teeth spaced between crookedly straight gaps,
constantly inspected with your little finger for forgotten bits of your last meal.
Thinning grey-brown hair combed every morning with dignity,
and a permanent scowl,
which twists into a grin at the most unexpected moments.
The Bulldog is what they used to call you,
though I never found out why.
Old age took your strength and unassuming dignity with which young men relieve themselves
free of painful swollen prostates.
Beneath your sun-blotched skin and flesh-colored hearing aids,
You're the same.
Ready to introduce anyone who gives your family the wrong look
to the glory of Heaven, or the fire of Hades
With your ******* fists.
"A gem" is what grandma always called you.
As though you were the most precious object in her life.
I look at you and see your hunch-backed figure
twisted with time and arthritis.
So un-gemlike.
Yet a gem, just like she said.

Time does not stand still as I had hoped.
I saw the changes in you, fleeting and subtle as they were.
I heard your words; kind, thoughtful and always enough to sustain me,
But I no longer felt their bare sincerity that always made me feel exposed and bare myself.
Your love turned into morphine, behind which you concealed a deeper ailment that you refused to show.  
And so I picked up this impeding world and placed it to the side.
You did not expect it, but I beheld you in a moment’s silence.
Your eyes as brown as I remember and your slender body gliding toward me in a dream.
And then you smiled and I heard your laugh again, and knew what I had searched for in this world was always here,
was always you.
I found my way home, and slept soundly with you at my side,
feeling warmth, relief, passion, ecstasy and the companionship of my truest friend.
We retraced the lines of our bodies that we once knew better than the streets of our small town.
And found they led to both the same and different destinations as before.
I drank you in as you slept,
And thought how long and hard I’d fought for this moment.
“I’m home,” I whispered to you in the night,
while you slept on, breathing steadily.

I found you.
Among the dust and water that makes up each one of us, I found you in all of your uniquity.
For a lifetime I loved you without knowing it.
And then I met you,
knowing immediately it was you I had loved all along.
Eventually life, pride, ambition took me away from you
to worlds where people sit strangely, eat strangely,
even walk strangely and sleep strangely.
But strangely enough, we were all the same.
And we laughed at this realization.
I took you with me.
We walked along the Bosphorus drinking pomegranate juice,
listening to the drums and strings and rhythmic Ottoman voices that caused our souls to ache.
We tasted sand, brought in on the wind from that barren desert rich in so little but greed.
We visited cities in jungles, where local fare made us thankful for our many hours spent cooking, and perfecting the flavors that help define us.
I took you with me, my love.
You helped me don my suits and tie my ties and kissed me as I held you close before another day's harangue.
But in your mind, you were never there.
And you made me see:
A world separated us. And so I moved it.

This is too far,
I know I’ve gone too far.
As if the light of day were enough to wake
my dormant wit,
               But I know it’s not.
My children lay dead. My wife lies cold and still.
How long I sit in silence
   I can’t know.
My arms are lifeless weights along my sides,
My hands are crusted
With my family’s blood.
I cannot know the horrors of last night,
Echoes of screams
                   And a rage not my own
Are all that I can manage to produce.
At last I gather
their once warm bodies
and lay them down beneath the high noon sun.
Our house is now a broken shell,
    Much like me.
The door hangs from a single copper hinge
A parody of
   my fragile mind.
No windows remain, only empty holes
Beneath a partially
       collapsed thatch roof.
I fall to my knees and begin to dig,
Every handful of dirt
Is agony
To my shattered hands, I welcome the pain.
I dig the hole
wide and deep to fit them.
At last, my greatest fear has come.
The grief arrives,
            and bears down upon my chest.
I lower my children first into the ground.
And kiss their brows,
       holding each, one last time.
My tears raining down on their broken bodies.
I gather my wife
    And softly place her
Alongside our children.
I kiss her lips
And whisper all my thoughts
Into her beautiful deaf ears.  I moan
And heave, tasting
       salt and earth and blood.
“Bring me death if you have any mercy!”
I shout to the clouds
                 and blue above.
I wait for death but there is no reply.
Gods do not answer
                                 pleas of the insane
I ask for their forgiveness one last time
And heap the earth
       Onto my happiness.
I walk away towards nowhere, anywhere
But this place where
My murdered family lies.

Fishing the backwoods in autumn,
I approach the creek with silent conviction.
As the sun climbs above the trees dispersing dawn,
and the leaves fall from the rooted trees,
the wind approaches from the East
drawing hungry fish near.

The painted morning clouds above are near
enough to call my own in the midst of autumn.
They linger in from the East,
Void of all animate conviction;
Just as the trees
Are unaware of this autumn dawn.

And as another silent dawn
Lures me to the woods so near
The crowded branches of the trees
shake off their leaves for autumn.
I thread my line and tie my fly with conviction
As the clouds and wind roll in from the East.

I have family in the East,
though never have they seen my woods or dawn.
Unfolding my arms I cast along the Eastern wind with conviction,
humming as the fish draw near.
The once swollen creek runs calmly in the autumn,
beneath crowded, naked trees.

A whistled melody comes from the trees,
carried in from the East.
Maybe the wind combined with autumn
are offering a tune to this quiet dawn.
Or could it be another person coming near
hoping to also cast into this dawn with conviction?

I salvage my conviction,
as the stranger casts and hooks the looming trees.
Perhaps he has not fished a dawn with trees so near,
let alone with a gusty breeze gathering from the East.
I leave him to his tangled trees, he leaves me to my dawn.
Soon enough whatever leaves were left are gone, scattered from their limbs due to
yanking line and autumn.