Horror floats on the air
colliding with our ears in spurts,
the news of African strife, sounding
like sticks on a snare drum, threatening
to burst the comfort zone
of our drive home from church, so
we stop at the store to buy milk
and eggs and flour.

147 souls lost:
Girls in a school
trying to grow
to learn
to change
Kenya.

Terror awoke them in their dorms.
A broken voice of a dead girl’s father travels
through the radio to Nebraska,

I called
and called
my daughter,
and finally
found
a computer
and
saw
her
name
on
the
list
among
those
shot
first.

Turning the radio dial down,
We are holding hands
in silence.
One of us suggests we bake banana bread
when we get to our home.

Let me not forget

Find and collect again
the moments of you&i;
in December wind and a field soaked with
raindrops

I dip my toes &
can't stop myself from jumping
into waves of retrospect that

Let me not forget

A pile of leaves
And the northern sky,
warn us
it's only a matter of time.

Diane,
out of control,
laughed and danced
on a hill.

prayers
paint the sky gray
change your mind,
on their lips

Baby, right on time,
the ocean air fanned
into that good night.

And we watched.

Nobody knows what the future holds:
keep on holding Diane
young,
or flip-flop,
try to go it alone?

Do you think you can go,
watch it all burn away?

It was only a matter of time:
Tottering off into that good night
on your own,

Baby it's a lifetime

like the end of day,
the wind picked up,
a wakeup call:
*the end of days

Our map seems stained
with the ink of Shakespeare's pen
dripping into our future,
Time plays with the plot
And we all must journey apart,
until we are together.

We wrestle time,
knocking out the days with patience
and mighty yawning.
Between us the fields of grass spread out
wider than fifty days on a calendar.

But at dusk, you are the star of my silver screen,
We unpack our minds like suitcases and
Move into the future together,
While apart.
Vanishing with a click,
Your goodnights soak the wind

In November
Time holds us apart,
Weary, but for the fullness of
December’s side-by-side mornings,
with toast crumbs and coffee breath
and kisses, anyway.

With hands full of promise,
you hold onto me and
we grow deeper and deeper
together despite a dreary
part of November.

I write soundlessly
My message to students
erasable
words the color of night

that cloaks still the marching band
practicing and
hiding loudly in the moments before dawn
awakening the day
calling forth the sun and
students--

rise and
greet one another with kindness
the message the color of night.

Old love letters paper the walls of my study.
Faded and peeling,
a few fall into the shadows
while most remain,
stubborn, insistent,
unyielding and unapologetic.

Oh, how the ink has begun to bleed!
To tattoo the dull, white paint in glimpses
between the letters,
as if I can hear their words
humming in a melody of minor chords.

I've stopped checking the mailbox,
full and lonely,
we are enemies.

Bookshelves surround me as well,
keepers of cluttered wisdom,
tomes of goodbyes, adieus,
and one or two apologies.

The stale air holds a minor chord--
the fermata of my early twenties
extends in a one significant pause:

You tell me,
We are not our history.
And then light the single match
illuminating
certain, brown eyes
and too much ruined papers.

Flames singe and curl the wallpaper
The fire sings over the sounds of my past.

We are alive in the crucible,
flames caressing my memories
now only in the fireplace
you have found in the corner.

Silent warmth and bare walls,
We sit down to write a new book,
bound in autumn leaves and cold rain,
and in a new handwriting,
You begin:
*We are alive in the crucible.

Around age 30, she had begun this dance
Of conversation, how to suggest the low-fat
Without insulting the husband’s paunch
And need for chocolate chip and fudge ripple.

Twenty years later, they stand in the aisle,
freezing, as they open door after door
in pursuit of the perfect opportunity
to be guiltless,
in at least one aspect of their lives.  

“Is that mocha chip a two-for-seven deal?”
He asks, squinting at his wife.
It’s not low-fat, it’s only sugar-free,
She said, eyebrows creased
“Well, it looks like a good deal.”
He is reaching, ignoring the tap tap of her foot,
when she snatches the tub from his palms
and the freezer door closes the conversation.
They leave for home in silence,
with frozen peas.

My fiance and I watch,
each carrying tubs of french silk
and mango sorbet, and feeling the fullness
of potential among the frozen foods,
and I add waffles and bananas
to our feast.

The water paints with sound
redamancy upon the shore
and our hearts.

And the cascade reminds me
Time can be beautiful,
Love is first shallow,
And then deep,
Oh, so deep, my love,
The color of shale and cobalt

We sit on the rocky shore
And stack stones into a cairn
Making the moment, the place.
Finally, he says, we’ve seen the ocean
Together.

As if seeing the vastness of Resurrection Bay
Perfects our Pacific love
Deepening.

We skip a few rocks
To test the shallows
To find the deep
To discover what we believe awaits us
In the future:

Love like waves
Pulled by the moon--
My hand pulled by yours
To go home.

As she bends,
Mittens grip the shovel’s wooden handle,
Firmly lifting the burdens
of snow.

Puffy gear smothers her lean figure
Where she rests a moment on the deck rail.
She has no interest in looking pretty.  
In the elements of Alaska,
Comfort supersedes fashion.

Within the sound of the shovel scraping
And the cascade of powder
into the Beyond,
She conquers, for a moment, the white
Woes of winter. These dreary days--

Her sullen friends--
Give her the gift of learning
to smile,
And teaching her children to smile.
Wear it long enough,

And you’ll feel it become yours.
She heaves burden after burden
Forgetting each as they dissipate.
The bare slats of wood shine, finally
Beneath her boots.

Everywhere, speckles of ice dance with light.
Gazing toward the sky, her task complete,
She drinks the bits of sun, a gift
Raw like joy.

When I empty my pockets of childhood memories
and lay them out on the tabletop,
I return again to my father, and his constant reminders--
Stand up straight. Be proud,
And I held his advice in the palm of my hand:
pondering my ability to throw it away into that river
of lost instruction, forgotten pleas, cumbersome nagging.

But instead, I collected his stone words,
and later used them to build
a life like his:
Of dignity, pride, purpose, and strength.

I return, each day, to the wooded path
where we'd walk among birch trees lining the road
like monuments of our time together.
And I'd reply, trying to be beautiful,
I am standing up straight,
And he'd say,
*I’m proud of you.

The television screen illuminates
the mahogany walls of His Holiness’ office
so different and distant from Marta’s casa in Iguazu,
Argentina, her handwriting in Spanish,
pleading the Holy Father from cheap paper,
to return and attend to his people.

On the screen, he sees the Garganta del Diablo
exploding in what the headline calls
‘Biblical-style’ deluge.
But He knows that the devil’s throat
spills out a more subtle evil than flooding:
a secret hatred,
disjointed humanity,
greed and gluttony
and outpour of passion of futbol
rather than prayer.

My child, he writes,
these falls bless the earth--
only God causes the floodgates to open
and only together do we feel holy presence
in the river’s spray.

He licks his finger, turns over the page,
and decides he needs not write more, besides
Que Dios bendiga a tí y a Argentina.
As the television flashes scenes of his pueblo y futbol.

Promise me adventures.
Promise me we'll be okay.
I need that promise, the kind
the fisherman tells to the sea,
the kind you'll tell to me.

And when the wind blows
the shingles off our tiny, little house,
promise we'll take me to that sea.
I think we'll be okay
with a day by the sea,
where the wind will push us onward
and sometimes further than we imagined,
into the gray
and murky green.

Promise me with a map
and the road
and the static in the radio
Help me find the promise
in the static in the radio.
I'll see the promise and the ocean
and in the hands clasps together
at my knee.

And when we find hope inside the clouds,
promise me the rain
will cascade
diamonds
into the sea,
onto the shore,
and onto you
and even me.

Sit in a crowded gymnasium
on a Thursday.
Basketball is not the point.

Stare at the orange speck anyway.
Silence your phone and his voice from before,
Still inside your head,
words the color of the burnt orange ball.

Find music in the squeak of the rubber soles,
Notice the referee's slanting stripes, and how they blur
when you stare, until even pictures inside your head blur.
Nod to the man wearing the red cap beside you,
whose words dribble across your mind,

They imprinting a message:
travel
next year
last year
time
killing
foul
out
losses
hope.

Maybe you miss that last word,
Or maybe you see the message graffitied on the score board.  
Maybe you close your eyes and open them again,
And notice the white jerseys gleaming in song with light,
The same light that slants up toward you,
Your shirt should also be white,
With the same light shining on those who travel
and on those who foul out.

Sit in the crowded gymnasium
on a Thursday,
and forget about what he told you last night.

Tú te estiras
llevando la luz matinal
mi copa rebosa.

-----

You stretch out slowly,
wearing the light of morning
my cup runs over

I am a mountain stream,
alive in the midnight sun.
No longer dormant white,
I color the rocks with dappled light
as a keepsake for the magpie and the mountain.
I must run onward
tumbling towards the tree line,
begging rocks to let me pass.

They call me Susitna,
little traveller from the North ridge.
I carry pieces of the mountain Talkeetna,
a gift for my brother, the sea,
named Knik, who sends gilled messengers
speckled silver, white, and red
to welcome me home--
the mountain streaming
to the sea.

Why have you forgotten Him?
Oh, you soul of bitterness.
I stand on the dry land,
surrounded by those who sense your rotten scent,
Oh my soul.

It is not well
that I should perish
unable to drench your putrid mess in water
This desert cannot compare
to the deep, deep well
that I so desperately need.

Oh my soul,
Why are you so downcast,
Oh my soul,
unable to gaze up toward the hope
that could save.

This is not well
Crackled and brittle
Oh my soul, I stumble
with this thirst.

If only I could find a well
Where deep calls to deep,
But that kind of roaring showers of glory
isn't for us, oh my soul.
Is it for us?

Oh
my
God,
have you forgotten
me
and my soul?

I relinquish the breath in my lungs,
Throw to the dirt all that I am,
Oh my soul, please leave me alone.
But dirt turns to rock
beneath me.
And cold
becomes wet
becomes a trickle
becomes a stream.

Oh my soul.
The river has found me.
OH
MY SOUL.

I stumble into hope, into grace, into a river
flowing with life.
This is our hope,
Oh my soul.
Be clean,
Oh my soul.
Drink deep,
Oh my soul.

And it is well
with my soul.

Explorer of ink smudges and paper cuts,
She pilots her pen along the roads of a page.
With crisscrossed legs, she travels with windswept hair,
Scrawling to him on a route of blue and the red:
"Each moment we are together,
we write a new line of this poem."

He rummages through leaves of paper,
Words scribbled upon the pieces
like freshly fallen snow upon tree branches.
He searches in vain, seeing only her emerald-brown eyes.
Finally, with words at a breakneck speed, he writes:
*"And yet, there will never be verses enough
to encompass the scope of our voyage."

Maybe I should view this pen
the way my cat sees it,
As she tries over and over
to pluck it away with her velvet paws
from my hesitant grasp,
in some game she has invented
simply to pass the morning
in joy.



----------------------------------
Haiku version:
While I see a pen
my house cat, a game of joy:
robbery with velvet paws

Five girls speak softly in
Puzzle-pieced clouds of the morning sky---
Their words fit together slowly,
but beautifully.

Sharing handshakes of humor,
they are tranquil topaz melting white.

Dreams of love like sunsets on their lips
A question tiptoes
toward confidence
glowing on the horizon.

And a Nor'easter wind of boys blows by,
blustering with force, and no subtlety,
Unsure of their strength  
to shift and shape the climate
of the high school hallway.

Just look outside, on a spring morning,
It's obvious that clouds are fascinated by the wind.

Laughter falls in rain
From the girls, scattered like clouds.
The boys stop, drenched and confused.

Rolling up his sleeves
in waves of watery time,
He unfurls fists
across the sand:

The old man's hands
outstretched
to bless the shore.

You are shelves holding the books, alphabetized and happy.
You are the ink soaked in the page.
Outdoors, you are the sea chasing the shore.
You are also the glowing candle flame at dusk,
bright and encumbered by no darkness.

However, you might be interested to know
You are not the broken window,
nor are you the dog's yipping bark
through the screen door.
You could never possibly be the
dog's bark.

Instead, you are the thin, glassy waves polishing the shore,
You are the steel bridge between two lands,
You might even be the sleeping apples, tucked inside the pie.
I am quite sure you are also the handshake between two strangers,
as well as the writing on this page.

You should also know that, in all the plentiful imagery of the world,
I am the needle crackling on the vinyl record.
I am also the artist's filthy paintbrush.
I can also be, at times, the tea steeped too long,
and of course, I am the postcard, en route.

But you--you are the cobalt sea at midnight, snuggled to the shore,
You are the coffee-colored shelf supporting the books,
and somehow also, the ink imprinted on the page.

Weighs like
a tear drop sliding down pale white,
a dappled stone I found on Sanibel Island,
sunk down, deep in my pocket.

Perhaps weighs like
time:
heavy with silence
soaked in emotion,
like colored dye bleeding into white linens.

Yes, a word weighs like
time, and time weighs like stones,
I strain to hold in my palms the encumbering moment,
after you utter,
"Look, Liz, I have to be
Honest."

And you caste the word like a rock
into the lake
and watch it fall
deep, deep, deep
weighed down.

A stone that remains sunk still
in my pocket.

Sway seconds ecstatic bliss
The taste of lime and salt
Skin glows, criss crossed shadows
and a panic of lights.

Shifting music
Rhythm intoxication and
Shifting energy

Boldness alights
like a flock of crows gliding in at dusk,
landing on the shoulders
cast in neon-disco light

They fan feathered-dollar bills
With prospects of revelry and dancing
odes to debauchery and youth
and feigning adoration
from the swaying, neon hips.

Subtle chants and hungry eyes
We deserve this
We deserve this
We deserve--

Disappearing in her act,
She arises, in the fame of a dove
Unburdened and free
in the whitest of lights.

She thinks briefly of flying away.

Mi alma no puedo estirarse
alrededor el mundo y continúa igual.
Las olas del mar son como bestias
y están atacándome con el espíritu del pasado.
Del espíritu pesado, con dudas.

Regresa el alma a mi cuerpo,
en el mitad de la tierra linda,
Pero lejos del mar, en el viento nuevo,
la única ola es el césped fértil.
La tierra canta de una promesa desconocida.

Pero su forma de ser no me toca.
No caigo la canción, no tiene sentido la tierra: negra y oscura, será congelada pronto.
Sin claridad del hielo
ni cielo.

No quiero tener dudas.
No quiero buscar mi juventud en los árboles,  
En el año de mi niñez.
Nunca jamás encuentro a mi mismo en las ramas marrones, sino en tus ojos morenos.

Mi cuerpo me duele para tí
Como los árboles esperan el viento otoñal.
Los días me pasan como hojas del árbol otoñal,
Se fueron. Se fueron.
Me voy. Me fui.

¿Cómo es posible que las dudas me dejen?
Que mi alma anciana vieja en el mar *******,
Hasta me da cuento que mi corazón ya haya estado cerca
en las manos tuyos,
como un regalo
en dos hojas otoñales.

I pour myself out
becoming a water to drench this land
and the fields beyond.

My words dig--
tilling the soil, the moments,
uprooting what threatens the growth,
bestowing the change
to the fields beyond.

Autumn will tinge the world
I once viewed as green and new.
But as the green grows
in a familiarity tainted by ennui,
we hold our breath against the cold
promise of harvest
and wish to grow, as well.

October is for waiting.
As a foreigner transplanted in this flatland,
I ponder any small, crucial detail
I've forgotten
and wait for our joy
to grow
gold.

In every realm of myself--
I doubt.
Voice-clouds congregate
And roar in the sky-space
of my mind.

Searing, jagged, electric
My mind’s words cut—
light
but not illumination.
I am,
Myself,
the tempest.

The wind gusts
Unsure of where she belongs.
The sonorous maelstrom
Beats back any of your love-words.
I remain alone
And it is autumn in my mind.

Change storms in
Unforgiving
And unquiet.
I am,
Myself,
The tempest.

What can calm the wind?
Who am I without the wind?
Despite the clouds, I fear drought
I fear wind
I fear drought
I fear
I am,
Myself,
The tempest
I fear

I return, citylost, and in want of stars
once more above the snowfields--

These winter friends repose and revise:
purity upon me, cleansed like the dying grass of the fields.
I return for the moment Time allowed.
Once more, after concrete-touched skies
spread across my many months
away.

You found me folding up the maps
of my past, and dusting off memories.
Taking my hand, we drive past all of the limits,
Memory and wind directing the car--
Everything glides across the frozen plains.

We serenade only ourselves & the wind,
as the earth rests in her shades of black.

The sky drenches me with speckled light,
Generous winter light,
like a gift left-over from Christmas

Once more
To me,
From you.

We unpack our hearts' words, unfolding our souls
We know what we are but not what we may be

We are the falling leaf in autumnal wind
'Tis season's shift that mists a souls' content

We are a glass full, brimming to be poured out,
Fear drives the self toward the drought of selfishness

We are song in crescendo, and silence in farewell
Yet courage oft' comes like a surprise snowfall

We are a wave rising up, only to descend upon the rocks
Bringing bitter remembrances of faded pasts

We exist in a paradox, whose key rests in the palm of Time
*We know what we are, but not what we may be

as the rain soaks all
the earth in spring's travel,
let also thy grace drench
my wandering
soul

Slant-light covered us
and we breathed, imagining the salty air
of a shore nearby.
"It's time to discover
all the things that fill us."

So we sang the secret chord,
about our stolen hope.
Sometimes there is peace in darkness.
We drank in the sunset
and tried to find the Ursa Major
amongst the stars in our eyes.

Now, the birds stretch their wings on the breeze
as I watch puddles form outside my shoddy apartment.
Three seas away, you gauge time by
the waxing moon's light on the cornfields.

The moon can make your eyes burn
from its brightness.
God's Canopy of Grace.
A lot of a good thing often makes you ache
for more.

We examine simplicity,
Utter awe, incurred by a moment:

Driving into the nothingnight
The wind touching everything
Two hands growing old and familiar
Staying warm together
Trying not to destroy the stillness.

Along with fragments of the sky,
     We
            Fall,
                   Golden.

How is it, that the world has not stopped shimmering
since we saw the moon drench the flatland?

Your hand still in my hand
Your eyes blink, often
slowly.
As they close, I yearn for them
to open up to me once more,
and glimmer with the warmth
you've stored away inside your soul
just for me.

Don't look away,
even if it burns.

You speak love into the shadows
Lights, again above our heads.  
I'm always dazzled by light when you're around.
We pray for things like peace,
and discover that God's been giving it, all along.

J. Alfred Prufrock had it wrong:
The universe begs to be disturbed
By love like this.

Letting the wind and moon
and the stillness press upon us.
We are infinite.
And a little dizzy.
Hope expands in our chests
         So many birds scatter the sky.

We are Walton, Nebraska:
A normal surprise,
God's whispered secret about beauty
covered in the moonlight,
heard only by the wind
that pushed us together.

Morning keeps weeping,
while I wage war
within myself:
Civil battles, composed
of pen-ink & lines,
of unceasing tension & grief.

I attempt surrender:
To cast off the weaponry.
To rejoice: barefoot
on my wood floor,
marred by litter:
Indolent daggers of charcoal & ink.

Time beats me down, a battle drum:
Rhythm moves me onward,
despite my cry to retreat,
Tiptoeing wordbombs & rainbullet noise:

A song to keep me alive
& the wind howls her tears against
my closed windows
& I wonder how this ends:

With ink-explosions
Or with sword-swipes.

Time keeps her moonlight
dripping, day after day
breaking, we reach toward
something beyond us:
We consider the lilies, the birds,

The trees budding promises into the air,
The breeze tasting of rainwater,  
The chalkdust collecting in our open palms
like childhood dreams, in our hearts.

Pulled forward from the shadows,
Fast, by the spotlight of spring.
We are understudy actors:
finally on the stage, but surprised
by the drama of split tea,  
rainkissed pauses, and almost burn
down the apartment.

All the while, the moon smiles thinly:
time-light in the sky, in our eyes.

We've a long distance yet to travel.
Our footsteps press into mud and freeze
toward the West, where we learned to be happy.
I gaze East into the unknown,
not quite deciding to be brave.
While you search heaven for a piece of your soul:
The skylark, ascending.

Time beats her pulse into
charcoaled stillness:
Persistence reminding a heart
to keep going

This story circles the earth
like a river scribbling a message
of scars and songs and a something-else,
swirling like old-fashioned script
beyond the binding of a book.

A vagabond leaves the trail of words
dropping from palms stained with ink,
blue from a wet horizon.
The salt of three seas press to her lips
as they part.

The wind brings songs to quench her word-thirst.
Syllables soak the world with sound
and the air fills with the smell before rain,

She tastes phrases of perhaps
and imagines the final page as a picture book:
a rowboat anchored with hope.

Dimlight breaks our time in two
&I; slip on the stillness of morning
like a new, clean dress.
Soundhues cover the chaos of my mind
in almostsilence.

Can you hear our nostalgia brightening?

Your voice, from forever ago,
echoes&dances; on the wings of sundrenched birds.
They greet the sky as an old friend:
soundhue hellos harmonize.
&I; am awake, finally.

Part 1:
&words; spill out:
heart-hued as a sunset accident
steeped in courage
&staining; my night sleepless

∈ prayer
our hands raise up to caress this newnight,
&cas;; scattered shadows like
spooked birds in flight

Part 2:
&inkscribble; spreads
fully across the tablet
of my sullied, aging heart.
Pages soaked&dying;
purpledark

weightedbeauty
after you speak the sunset-things
to fruition across the fields:
Nebraska solitude&desire;

Part 3:
&rising; again
on a third day, I must depart
&brea;; our day in two
(you&i;)

The sun&i; shatter time,
as the dawnmirror
remembering dusk
cracks today into the night

&words; escape
from parted lips&uncapped; pen
to fly above the broken world
as sparrows rising like

Son&Wor;; resurrected
pouring salvation on the stony soil
of our souls
like sundrench in spring

&script; winds verdant
vines around us
watered by heavenwords of
forever ago

Part 4:
&ink; fills up my bookheart
as I return it to a cage
&leave; the you&i; behind me
in a vagabond-blue nighttime

Hace un mes que te dije
No podía esperarte más.
Y el abismo entre nosotros
tragó: las plumas, los sonidos,
y la lengua que querría cantar.
Eras un pájaro con ojos cerrados.

Las alas de mi mente
Golpeaban el aire tranquilo
Dónde no podía encontrarte
Sino tu canción vacía sin amor.
Me encuentro a mí mismo
En el campo: me siento muy seca
y sola pero sabia.

Siempre me llevaban las alas
Al norte, afuera, al norte
Donde oigo la canción de mi pueblo,
De la gente que no me ha dejado
Por nada, aunque llueve.

Hace un mes que me dio cuenta
De otra forma de ser, cercano.
Me ha tocado como las suspiras
Del árbol que tiene hojas
con la riqueza de los ojos cafés
del chico distinto aquí:

Mirándome, hasta que debo salir.

Otra vez salgo con las alas
Afuera de lo que conozco
Porque, como un pájaro del otoño,
El viento fresco me hacen una seña
que yo debería olvidarme las hojas y los ojos
porque ellos se caen siempre
de los árboles a la tierra dura:

Mirándome, hasta que te caes también.

wears overalls
and drives an old pickup truck

about half the speed
we’ve set our heart to travel

through this dying stretch of Nebraska,
our trail slicing west without end.

Time admires his work, keeping pace with
the changing season, and forcing us to  

follow: windows down, we fill our lungs
with the colors of transition

exhaled by tinged leaves that grow
up and older, matching the rust on the truck.

You finally manage to pass, and we leave
Time and his fields fading behind us.

I feel you slip away
slowly--
like a breath of smoke
from my lungs--
at once foreign and
part of me.

You drift away
from my lips--
parting,
as if to say,
Goodbye?

Sultry smoke dissolves,
Tearing scars into
my lungs,
As you-- you
also burn inside
my chest(my heart)

and I watch,
with stinging eyes,
all the smoke
fades west,
into the wind.

I wish for:
the fall
the transition
the change
of everything,
all that we knew
or thought we knew

of the leaves,
their greenness stretching upward,
in love with the blueness above,
they reach, thinking
they could touch
the sky,

I wish on:
their love
that changes all things
to gold
that yellows all things
in age
(You decide which)

I wish because:
as we descend with them
as we shift toward the tomorrow-place,
away from the beloved,
the sky,
we will finally know
whether we are
golden
or yellow,
brittle, and broken.

A butterfly collided with
my face, today,
as I meandered along that trail.

His wings bruised a kiss
upon my forehead,

echoing another day long ago,
or maybe from a past life
along a different trail.

I can no longer be sure.

And when I blinked
to rediscover myself,
we were both crying, again.

So I brushed him away
toward the dirt road
and kept walking,

My forehead still stinging,
faintly,
marked with a tiny, red heart.

Two words
you paired and stretched to fit
between us
Bitter and beautiful on my tongue:
Más despacio.

More slow-space:
A translation in my mind,
distant and young and heavy
with so much smooth hair knotted-up
to tie off my twisted thoughts
from escaping.

If only my sheer, shiny verbosity
could challenge
all the air
of that slow-space
you so tersely placed
between
us.

Strike the match
for a brighter moment.

The candle glitters through the air thick with
darkness and thoughts and sounds
echoing from the unknown around us.
Power has escaped into the somewhere else
beyond this Nebraska farm house.

Sealed inside, only the whisper of light.
We must wait
in scant illumination of reality and nonreality.
No view in front of us
or behind.

All we can do is hold our gazes to this
flame
between us:
flickering
each moment
we breathe
together
fragile
trying to beat back the darkness.

And you know what?
I bet it can,
I hope it can,

as the wax coats the fingers of
our clasped hands,
and hardens them
together
in a moment.

We part like two songbirds
caught in different breezes,
You’ll drift south til you reach the sea
And I feel the northward wind take me
toward gray, silent light of evening.

Tucked and unsettled in the newest of nests
I see Silence point her finger
at the holes in the air
where your melody has faded
over the curve of so much land
that spreads out between us.

I try to sing by myself—
Our souls sing in the same language,
A song crafted by the Creator—
But tragedy, defined,
Is singing lonely goodbyes
into the heart of the wind at springtime.

My sun and stars,
You flavor my life with light,
And guide me in the way of goodness
Just as the heavens direct sailors
Across the sea to safety at night.

I wonder, am I the moon of your life?
Fading always to the west,
I crave your eastern light.

Darkness threatens to swallow us.
Our lips meet,
One last eclipse.
And the weary men on the ships below
Shield their faces with calloused hands
And sigh, finally able to see
Into this bright abyss.

Whatever it may be--let's face it,
while these rain drops collect like moments
in the valleys of our lives, and rush
away from out-stretched hands
to water the fertile ground of youth.

We must face it.
This rain both lengthens
and diminishes life,
until everything has grown
up around us, old and green.

I miss when we called it ‘new.’
The watery seconds pool up at our feet,
sinking into mud as thick as memories,
so far from our lowered gaze.
We watch these droplets of time-puddles,

Together, afraid to draw ourselves tall,
to be as we were made to be,
and to face each other and the heavy clouds

of everything that is
and never will be

once this rain drifts on
without us.

And when the leaves begin
to grow from boughs,
pushed and pulled each day
by the wind—
Remember, as Pablo once told me:
waiting
and
hoping
are really just the same
act of the will
Espera

There is nothing so constant as
a dirt road in Nebraska,
beyond where the pavement ends.

This timeline beneath my feet
Crunches on and on,
Further than even I know.

This methodical sound of time passing,
Echoes off the fields of an ancient prairie
so superior to its cousin, the **** carpet

of my grandma’s house where
I would hide all my coal-colored jellybeans,
Pretending they were herds of cattle, grazing

Along dirt roads, such as this—
My venerable trail of rock,
Stretching out as far as time perfected.

A trail of ceaseless rock
Worn down by the years of
feet stomping to the memories

of the house, and the jellybeans, and the grandma,
all outlived by a dirt road that reminds me
*for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

A blushing German girl,
She walked for miles through breezes colored by
The lulls of a church *****
drawing chants from a faithful people.

Her skirts fluttered lightly,
clean and crisp like the wind,
And swishing with the cadence of her steps.

Strong steps, she passed to her daughter,
And later were received by my mother:
Generations of footsteps
Drenched in the melodies of German hymns.

I, too, walk wearing skirts of strength,
Squinting into the sunset
And our future.