When all you see are shadows
the source of light is right behind you.

There is a bird in the poplars!
It is the sun!
The leaves are little yellow fish
swimming in the river.
The bird skims above them,
day is on his wings.
Phoebus!
It is he that is making
the great gleam among the poplars!
It is his singing
outshines the noise
of leaves clashing in the wind.

What goodness is there in this wine?
Am I trading time for smokey phantoms,
or is this the way it always was?
Rising from fire and running away.

All my dreams speak softly of progress
and the violence of life,
their murmurs like a word I mistake for my name,
echoing in a crowd and
turning me around.

I've found no solace in peace,
nor in the luscious droughts of love
together we drink and have been drunk on.
However, under my restlessness
my steps are sure,
and the road home,
winding as it may be,
seldom seems against me.

old truck had a flat
at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo* mountains
on a rutted brown road, by a singing stream,
swollen from snow melt, the sagging bridge across
looked too tired to handle our load

we replaced the bald tire
with one equally hairless

we were washing
the grit and grease from our hands
in the baptismal waters, when we saw him,
so small we were surprised he could walk,
and her, at the other end of life’s long string,
so old she moved like a question mark down the bank,
a bucket in one sinewy hand,
the tiny boy’s paw in the other  

we crossed to greet them,
though neither of us knew why...  
but we were under an infinite blue sky  
and on four wheels again--what else was there to do,
but cross the rushing waters to meet strangers
by a strange road?  

the little one spoke, with words so small
they disappeared by the time they reached our ears  
how we knew what he was saying we would never recall  
though we did as he commanded, taking off our shoes,
placing our feet in the cold current, following his lead
in this dance on a nameless road  

the ancient one never uttered a word,
but gestured to us, to the sky, to the blue green peaks,
and to the waters at our feet, and told us, with skin and bone  
that the blood of everyman flowed from the high country,
and washed our tangled toes
and simple soles

Midday,
blessed by the summer rain.
Running out to roll up car windows
as the grey flows over.

The best medicine.
Asphalt hotter than the water drops
darkening the sidewalk spot by spot.
To myself: praying for it not to stop.

Let this heat be made steam,
the bitter physical drift into dream.
From my seat on the green
things seem less under pressure,
rising even as the rain keeps coming down.
Our clothes growing closer to the ground

Summer shower medicine drink me deep.
April flowers dead again
leaving seeds to sink and sleep.

At the death of every blossom waits a fruit,
at the laying down of every life
stands a youth.

7.17.14

I’ve come to meet you here, in some sacred place
to be here         alone    with                    you

beautiful waker:
luke deep eyes opening to the moonlight
awake
-
But not alone
because I sit with you beneath the thousand gazes of stars
I hold you close with my ears
this golden hour    ))))       between    ))))        trees,  
throwing your voice
with the crickets

waiting
for the space between us to throw it back
-
Individual, but never separate at the smallest level of things,
sharing together the energy of multicolored levels

-
and we remember, making our way through the dark:
-
this world is unforgiving
and we were wild and alive,

                                         in this place I have known you always
-
In this place, I keep for you
The secret of the leaves

We are not alone in our despondent footsteps toward a truer North
but, I will help pave a path for you and your losses

unfold the pages I had folded
kiss a bruise underneath my hand
relax with disappointed youth onto another
and tell me, that
you don’t enjoy being lost inside all that passes

it is here, this sacred place
we throw our burning hearts into the empty creekside
and we build better homes at the roots of trees

the sky is no longer surrounding us
the birds look to one another to retreat home
we both put things in our pocket without noticing the other
a low roar of emptiness from one point to another
in the distance it is clear that all you know is relevant
and I say, to myself, these things,
and you say to yourself, these things
no one else could know

and you would say; out loud
  
“I loved him”.
and I would kiss the silence that came after
because I still love too

fever in your honesty,
pulling teeth from the names you carry
woven in your clothes

I sit alone with you
spreading the silence that reaches from our toes
outward into the
dark

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into ****** motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.