Thirty years passed
like a dark flight of
small birds across
a half-blue moon.

I watched through
a keyhole of grief,
viewpoint diminished
like medicated pain.

I watched lemens
climb skyward,
remembering as
they fell away
into the night’s
silent smile.

With you no longer,
there is no wealth
of consolation. I am
as frail as a rag,
my will a withered
fruit.

How pure a thing is joy
that I no longer know,
my heart espaliered
to a wall of silence
and the sorrows of distance
that never scatter away.

We had been gentle as two
humming birds, beak to tail,
fluttering on lightness….

Until the green flames
left your eyes forever.

Until something invisible,
persisting aloft,  kept
your hands moving, as if
trying to make contact….

Until April stopped shouting
emerald, whispering pigeon-
gray instead.

Until you,who loved music,
left your plush guitar case
open, empty, indigo velvet
turned to the dun of stone.

Until my heart turned puddle-brown
and I cried tadpole tears into a black
pool barely needled by the moon.

As twilight deepens, angst begins.
In a tender light of lavender
your image may appear,
in fields or woodlands,
among tall tombs where
tension hides in silence.

Wings of angels seem to glide
on ice across the sky, and in
a drone of babble, some strange
arcane language, is this how the dead speak?

We live in these erratic times,
searching for depth through
the opposite of being. How can
we say that life will find a way?

Perhaps through these black holes,
there are other luminous worlds.

The tulip, your flower, has changed its form,
its upright stem no longer crowned with
perfect instances of hue.

Like fallen petals, randomness now
flutters in my heart, the sweet scent
of bloom still floating on the edges
of belief.

My memories of breath’s brief signature
break away and leave me in a world
of lost directions, each flower shaded
with the ghost of its inhabitant.

Each flower is a kind of heart
that can’t let go.  Other losses
translate into nuances of dream,
but you are still a shadow in the
moonlight, showing what’s no
longer there.

If Only …..

If only…
to lift the heart,
to play the game
of hope again,
to caress the softness
of longing.

If only….
the half-spent moon
would re-appear in full,
gently touching each
dark shadow on the edge
of night.

If only….
time had held still,
billowing into a mound
of motionless pink cloud.

If only ….
the dream of myself,
filled with a thousand
frailties, would brighten
the cold room of my life
with warm, quiet smiles.

If only…..
the dove’s shimmering
coo would break through
the tears of dawn where
the silk-white sky would
swallow me.

Then, at the first unexpected
tinge of brightness, I could
pat, stroke, kneel and kiss
the earth where your upturned
palm meets mine.

This quilt we shared
has become heavy with sadness,
damp with tears since your passing.

Rips and tears, unrepaired,
are now gaping holes
of stark loneliness, each one
a wouund, a near-death
of the soul.

This quilt, once a shelter
from world’s cruelty,
now bleeds grief
into every night.

Where is the magic needle,
To sew up the gaps ?
Where is the thread of kindness,
the stitches that heal the heart ?


I huddle and shiver beneath
this thin reminder of past joy,
a gift of love given, then
suddenly snatched away.

Like a
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Then a deadly
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Of beak-masqued terrorists
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Threatens each unguarded
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Fear grows everywhere suspicion
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Yesterday’s mosquito makes tomorrow’s
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It’s the season’s ungiving
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No remedy : only the sky’s massive closed door and
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