Listen to the tipping-down
of branches, after rain, after rain.
Listen to the world-wash,
to the yes of blossom, to the anxious
out-stretching, to the notes
born from a dream.

Listen to the inside silences
and speak them to the sky.
Listen to the stone wish to
be softened, to the earth wish
to be held.

Listen to the bluebird’s warble,
to the looming hum of bees.
Listen to dawn light deepening,
to the flutter of soft-sheathed wings.

Listen as the stream remembers clarity,
Listen to the strange complexity of beauty.
Hear the one design of motion as it sings.

Your dream-self came to me
with its familiar night music,
on delicate note at a time.
I listend to imagination’s tongue,
chanting the mantra of being.
Entranced by moon color,
I measured the distance of
meteors between your planet
and mine.

Dawn came reluctant
into the fog of high trees,
into the speckled dark
of mountain peaks.

Suddenly, you were there,
an unforgettable fragrance
of light, like blossoms
blowing through clouds,
a butterfly dream that
would last forever.

Frailer than dreams, love came,
soft as a song, shy as a glance,
but perfectly alive, into
the unkempt meadow of
my heart.

How to measure love…
a trillion nano-seconds
untranslated, flowers that
guess and miss, stars that
don’t exsit and what excuse
for not except « of course »
and « maybe »

For the syntax of love
is feeling, when chemistry
approves and life’s more
that a paragraph and death
a mere paraenthesis.

Fire, ice, air, all in liquid form,
sunken rigs and ancient dwellings,
secret serenity of tides,
oceanic greenhouse equal to all
planets where sunset flares
like Saturn’s rings, coral cathedrals,
rosy as ****** dreams, sun dissolved
in pices, hurrying to the depths
of darkness, mists cold as dawn.

And you, my Merman, god
of the day, skimming the surf,
helmet gleaming, blowing
your horn of departure.
You create the pleats and
furrows, seagulls pulling
in your wake. You catch
the light that kindles
the Atlantic, just as it
sets fire to my heart.

Through night’s body, day breaks –
a wheelbarrow of dreams transformed
to a pile of thoughts.

I want dawn’s gray curtains hung
upon high floods of air,
the pizzicato voice of tiny
brown birds replaced by
the shameless, noisy gull.

I want to wallow in the clumsy
freedom of steamy clouds
caressing waves, as you
touched me, so elegantly,
like the wings of the moth.

I want to paint away sorrow
with the green furze of spring.
I want the fresh wind but
also its still, breathless
moments.

I want to take part in
the year’s re-birth and
create you all over again.

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.