Staring at the ceiling sky
Past lover's faces
Eyes
Dotting
The midnight moonless skies

Stars twinkling
Their light having been cast
Many light years ago

Each one for their time
Had in their eyes - for me -
The golden glow

Meteor showers of montage sequences
faces
scenes
times
fly by
Trailing ribbons in the ceiling skies

The dots when taken together
Tho eons passed and separated
Pieces and bits form constellations

Eros
Aphrodite
The Mother
Sancho Panza in drag disguise
A female Damocles and her sword
The Companion Star, still glowing here in the Western sky

Looking backwards in time
Their presence was once present
Now, all have vanished
Moved on to other places in space and time

Aware of all I have been given
All I've learned

Remembering I loved each one
And when the moon is right
and the ceiling is dark
and there is no sleep
for me tonight
Their light still shines
On my ceiling night sky.

I enjoy, the subtle shades, connotation of each word,
probe, how dexterously they are put together in an order
like jewels in an ornament for generations to wear.
The way the construct speaks to the brooding solitude
that moves in and out of my soul,as the reading proceeds.

I smell a fragrance, like the scent of fresh ripe fruit,
eager to taste it, sink my teeth deep, draw juice,
now find a memory awaiting to resonate with the
cadence of my heart.
                                                 I am such an animal
that can smell poetry's worth from a distance,
a goldsmith who could  predict it's weight in gold
my avarice for a poetic diet, never dies, only swells.

Every poem of my kind, to me does something
my lover does, decidedly every imagery, carry forward
a memory, like wind a cloud, reaches a space beyond
touches eternity with it's magic wand,  a flash results
Even if the poet leaves me mid way, I'd still see the light.

I've an enticing excuse to imagine what I want to see
a poem doesn't produce anything,but what it does to mind,
is pure magic,I am in that flow,far from the illusory reality.

What I Mean When I Say Chinook Salmon

By Geffrey Davis

My father held the unspoken version of this story
along the bridge of his shoulders: This is how
we face and cast to the river — at angles.
This is how we court uncertainty. Here, he taught
patience before violence — to hold, and then
to strike. My fingers carry the stiff

memory of knots we tied to keep a 40-lb. King
from panicking into the deep current
of the stream. Back home, kneeling
at the edge of the tub with our kills, he showed
the way to fillet a King: slice into the soft
alabaster of the pectoral, study the pink-rose notes

from the Pacific, parse waste and bone from flesh. Then,
half asleep, he’d put us to bed, sometimes with kisses.

Nat Lipstadt     3 hours ago

your answer to my caring but simple "checking in with you" inquiry, overwhelmed me and I have required days to fully comprehend the textured life of a man who see everything in color combinations that deserve recording in whatever medium his heart chooses. Time was needed, time to summon up the courage to reply with smithy-crafted, wright-shaped words that honor your honed skill.

my heart is gladdened by your inescapable ability (no, you cannot escape it) to perceive the values of life external and internal, that make your poetry a symbolic representation of all that is fine in the most aweome title that one can award ones self, human.

I am well aware that life has never given you a flush in the cards you were dealt. Nonetheless in e v e r y word you have written you have betrayed yourself as a loving man, appreciative of nature's gifts, and reenforcing them with fresh perspectives.

i make no pretense anymore; all poetry writing is a personal ledger kept, by which we daily, almost constantly, measure ourselves and record the small moments that sum up who we were, are and who we desire yet to be. Thus, indifference by others, no matter why, oft leads to a misleading sense of lesser self worth.

I well recall years ago reading your poetry here and ******* air in gulps as I basked in your lush attentiveness to the world in which we co-exist.
I even praised myself, by keeping your company.

You do not seek praise for self, but our shared gods have made our paths cross, so that like Abraham arguing with God not to destroy the evil cities of ***** and Gemorrah, if he can but find even just ten worthy men, so do I pray to anything, anyone, anywhere, I pray, if almost for selfish reasons, that your urge to write, to share, to see beyond the loveliest surfaces of our world and let others rest upon them, and to gift them to an almost,  undeserving  but needy world, never finds the Isle of Surcease.

If one man presses his claims upon the scales that judge your life, then all the weight of worth I load upon one side, in your favor, to beg you, let this single man's devotion to your cause, living with all the good and the sad that is therein contained, be sufficient to persuade that you must never suffer easily the delusion that your poetry is lacking  in any manner to prevent your sharing.

If not here,
then tell me where we can find each other's "instant messages" of recorded moments, that you uniquely supply.

I cannot ever obtain a good understanding of your perfect storm of the last seven years, but what you shared here and in every word you have ever writ, like my prayer here and the ones I have yet to utter, let them all, letter by letter, rise thru and up like the mists of dawn, travel gently upon the slow currents of our rivers, to reach you well received and by any deity,  willing to let us lend a hand.

Re demons, we defeat them or at least negate them, even temporarily through writing. Another reason to share your work, if even one sole solitary reader, gasps for air when reading you, if but one sheds tears at the human kindness you to continue to disclose in the quilt of quality of your works, to lift one soul's weighted-down heart, you have to, must,
feel obligated to share.

I have no more words to plead, so I will arrogant demand of you to accept this one fan, one devotee, one lover of your skill at capturing and then releasing, your words ever glow in this man's essence, as both necessary and sufficient.

forever yours,

nml