I am a musical note in a guitar
Waiting for the touch of dexterous hands

I am a chrysalis under a paling leaf
Waiting to be turned into a butterfly

I am raw ore in the far depths of the mine
Waiting to be extracted and purified

I am a smoldering piece of coal in the hearth
Waiting to be blown into a flame

I am a rough stone under the Earth’s crust
Waiting to be hewn into a diamond

I am an antique piece long buried in the soil
Waiting excavation to become a treasured exhibit

I am a piece of canvas fixed on the easel
Waiting for the touch of a master artist

How I long to transcend my rawness
Into something better and refined

But can I do anything wholly myself
Never! Everything depends on others will too

I discern I am only a flickering shadow
That has existence only if there is light!

We crash through
Class V relationships
with no life jacket
emerge waterlogged
and disintegrating
only to blunder through
thorny undergrowth
while searching empty
pockets for some
kind of map
to this always
foreign territory.

If that night could remember
it would call him back
to our Chinese restaurant
to fried rice and steaming tea
to our winter refuge of tile and cushions
60s retro black and white
Chrome legs of lacquered tables
with its mural of
our Great Wall

...winding, distant, wonder

If the snow hadn't muffled all
but our voices
we would not be—

so alone

Only I
felt his arm take its chance
around my shoulder
Guiding warmth
as good excuse as any
to touch

Two miles on foot
An arc in time
In lace of white
to hide— what might....

Below my window
“Good Night”
not enough
for troubadour
singing, pleading, stumbling...

(I worry about his long way home)

...and hardly notice...

How gently Time joins Snow
as if they cannot bare
instead, conspire
Decide the crystals
Send the flakes to sift over him

This loss needs snow
to blur his face
to fade from view....

This— tender let-down from the sky
As only snow can do...

Cover with beauty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o6zMPLcXZ8

Blue
Pink
Purple
God with no eyebrows in my drawings
I don't know why !!!

آبی
صورتی
بنفش
نمی دانم چرا خدا
!!! در نقاشی ام ابرو نداشت

I hold your life inside my own
as you hold me
in your sea of seeds and waving reeds
Beach grass on breast of sand

Ripples of wind
Across my dune
drifts...
your hand

Tracing the mark of a high tide
with my wanderings
Will I be the last?
to recall its highest reach upon the land?
I note the smell of dead and ebb
Would change it all on my return
if it were up to me

And once I started running out
“Wait! O, Wait!”

Black breaks
The sand bars
between the tide pool’s
red whispers of you

I now believe
gulls turn time in their wings

Route 84 would not lend me
the light of a star last night
Radio blazing at 75 mph
nonsense noise to chew gum by
Crackling political commentary
Static of distance and thick clouds
Invisible mountains blocking
Memories seeping through the cracks
coating the music in a film
I rub my eyes
watch myself punch alert buttons
But it’s the angels’ jukebox tonight

Roll down the window
Watch the heat escape

Summer again

I am building a castle of ancient stones
pulverized by relentless tides
Dragged across maps by mastodons
and mammoth glaciers
The scouring hiss
the ocean sighs
Time has lulled these smoothly
rolling them in the softest hands of sand
and gels of life’s comings and goings
tenderly tumbling
in the millionth moonrise—
Time deposits them here
wet and glistening

For the girl with the plaid two-piece to gather
Shoulders sun-burnt barely say
one week only,
one week of the fifty two
“It’s the time of the season…”
and daddies on the beach are watching….

She has chosen yet another stone
And the castle continues—
in oblivion to all but her legend…

     The queen will be safe here
     from the rabble
     The disgraced Tristan will surely seek her
     Among these lofty cliffs
     Between the raging circuit of the tide
     Here winds forbid the vengeful mob
     Here lovers learn
     the debt of love’s bad timing
     “Drink ye all of it!”
     --the potion that assigns our sorrow….
     She will not sleep—
     while I chew this gum--  GUM?

Roll down the window!

Angels escape with the heat
Waking me with the brush of their wings

As that eighteen-wheeler hugs my flank
And leans on the horn
Lights flashing
Rude rumbling under right tires
Tantrum of snow
In the draft of mass and velocity

…and the angels?
They’ve chosen another good one!
They must’ve liked the 80’s
Their wings slapping the windshield madly  
Their hands steady the wheel