Ragged stone cliffs frame a wanting sea
The podium of black moods
Grounds of final thoughts
The twenty second swan dive
There are easier ways
I’ve been falling for fifty years
And the bottom seems no closer
I can slow the descent with outstretched arms
A type of crucifixion without the nails and sin
You have no idea what goes through a mind in free fall
There is no reminiscence, only now
And still I hear it said that there’s someone in a darker place
I know; I passed her on the way down

I have a memory of those days
In Maine, with crashing coastal waves

When reading was a future right
Mom read, “Blueberries for Sal” at night

And that huge nameless tree in the field
At dark, a dinosaur concealed

Walking a stray black cat with a string
That ran up a tree and could not cling

Mom had to climb that tree, pregnant
And retrieve the remains and remnants

I remember those days, quite well
And the fake Christmas tree smell

The revolving multi colored light
That lit our fake tree until Twelfth night

In Maine there is snow, whiter than white
And memories that induce me to recite

I hear you coming with every crack of the knees
The air of your reproach stifles my breathing
And still, you are ten years past
Your ghostly presence has not abated
For I am small and inconsequential in your memorial
A toadstool among the Sequoias
I see an incomplete light through the canopy
In this dim and musty forest
Where fern and Lady Slipper does not comfort
This will be my shame
Content and complacent with this situation
Afraid to cast off his manifestations
This will be my downfall
Death isn't the end
Memories doth prevail

You say you've loved with all your heart
Dug down deep and pulled out a plumb

Reached levels of ecstasy with numbing toes
Except the ones that went to market

And still, there is hurt in your eyes
That can never be repaired by Botox

With every action, there is a reaction
But Newton’s Third Law does not apply here

Your soul speaks the language of the Universe
But lacks explanation in the vernacular

And when love is dead and gone
All is not lost, the sunrise is but an hour away

Rise up placid moon,
Through narrow bands of fiery cotton *****
From indigo to cobalt blue sky
Your motion, docile and free
And that sliver of silver light
Your cycles are said to guide the uninitiated
When you are full, they burst
For you are the light of the underworld
Full to new, new to full, and everything in between
Your shadow hides a secret as does mine
But yours is easier to reveal
There will come a day when earth shall release its bond
And you will be free from earthly influence
Just as death will discharge this soul
To meander from our earthly bodies
Free from the confluence that is body and soul

Vainly I stand before you
Waiting for an utterance
Any word of understanding
But these are days of famine

The honeysuckle flow of verse,
And kindness has abandoned
No words can repair this ruin
Too late, too late, to wait

My memory of you will fade
Yours of me shall never be
And thus is another chapter
Of broken dreams and lost love

Death and its mournful tidings
Obituaries and eulogies, read
Black ties and black veils, all in rows
Surround this shell and the open earth
The cold, damp wind sashays through and through
Memories, half a century old are lost and forgotten
A flight of geese overhead, perform a last flyover
Victory in death
Vestiges of family, say farewell and Godspeed
Tomorrow brings colder and damper weather