To observe the sun’s lightening
Sinking into steel night with laughter,
Browned by age, still clinging to
A treasure of ago.
To feel the dart of time and yet
Refuse regret.
To fold into a cotton peace
Whatever is easy to forget
Yet guard what still exists,
What the heart holds too precious
To escape…  A question?
The comfort of reply may come
In sleep, if in darkness we can find
Our way without craving the return
Of day.

I learned the language of words
but also that of signs –
which lies are welcome,
which truths unspeakable,
which sentences explode,
which soothe like a cool breeze.

I whispered to hide my foreign vowels.
I learned to be seen and not heard –
to soothe my joints, white with anger,
and the yellow bruises of shame.

I practiced insincerity
and swift apology,
hoping new linguistics
might arise from generations
of politeness mispronounced.

But the years spilled into
a new millennium and
I learned – however much
you love a language,
it may not love you back.

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.

A book of poems –
a stunning moment’s promise,
a planet of new songs
each scarlet stanza firing
neurons at the back of mind,

a word like «whorl»
violet verses, rhythm
thumping as if with curses

Each image a word explosion
Spilling sparks on the dark,

each metaphor a painting
each simile a saying

Rhymes of psychedelic highs
Music of soft-petalled tongue:

velvet sonnet
silky sestina
vigoruous villanelle –

Perfect lens capturing
each wavelength of light,
splintering time, filling history
with slippery equivocals.

Perfect circle, irridescent
kalidescope, all colors
transposed, admired,
re-interpreted.

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.

To soothe away the pain,
first dip into the glacial glow
of a million galaxies,
full of fire and ice.

Next, catch a moonbeam –
just one – in the palm of your hand
to remind you who you are.

Then carefully collect the wreckage
of the past to celebrate rebirth.
Search for wisdom’s blade of grass
hidden in the crevices of naked stone.

Deeply feel the force of things
but try to find how not to shatter
in the in-betweens of chaos.

Let the half-moon remind you
Of the of the shiny side
of you. Then go out searching
among the prickly weeds,
armed with shears of patience
To give all good things
a chance to bloom.

Hours have their own being,
creating a natural order of things.
They may flutter like flags in the wind
or spin down through the light.
They draw long shadows on
the evening air, as they begin to
leave off, always followed by another.
They may be warm as a candle flame
or bright and dry as the moon.
At the time of coldest emptiness,
they may extinguish the stars.
Sometimes, the hours come
in a dream like a longed-for
lover, folding their arms
around me, as if each may
be the last.

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.

Light flung down –
and something nameless
arrests the gaze –
the silhouetted hip,
an exercise in curves.
Woman or goddess ?
At her toilette,
no riches present –
god of love in chiaro scuro
holds a mirror where
imagination plays.
Her back turned, face blurred,
reclining Venus, illusive,
mysterious , tempting the eye
to desire, the mind to wander.

Autumn –the season named –
the end of each loud day
a wave in the voice of time.

The night’s gently gravity
reaches out for your shadow,
nostalgia’s chilled pattern
of longing.

Autumn and the land
is tinged with blood.
Time slows to a quiet
stream of moments.

Moonlight’s camber
turns to foreboding,
memory like pond-tarp
rises to the surface,
muddied forms escaping
capture.

Autumn’s moist gown of leaves,
the soft clock of earth signaling
its first chill. Your presence
lingeres in the beauty of decay.

Still, there are crevissesof light –
although a moss mosaic of sadness
inhabits the heart’s waterways,
in fragile drops of dappled light,
hope shines through.

Homage to Wallace Stevens



1. my thoughts are heavy,
    a wet blanket of gray
    like the darkening sky

2. falling leaves dangle
    leopard light mid-air
    over fields of purple mist

3. a wind-child plays
    with shadows faltering
    through black-armed trees

4. silence of shapeless black
    stretches between pin-***** stars
    and a glacial crescent moon

5. clock turned back an hour
    I feel split, confused by
    precocious night and
    early air-blue light

6. shop windows writhe
    with glittery excitement
    while I feel only
    the phantom fingers
    of too many years

7. season of between
    invisible beneath
    your gaudy disguise,
    you softly dialogue
    with death.

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.

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.

Like a
            h
            u
            r
            r
            i
            c
            a
            n
            e
At first a haphazard
                                  d
                                   r
                                   i
                                   z
                                   z
                                   l
                                   e
Then a deadly
           d
           o
           w
            n
            p
            o
            u
            r

Of beak-masqued terrorists
                                     i
                                     n
                                     v
                                      i
                                      s
                                      i
                                      b
                                       l
                                       e

Threatens each unguarded
                 m
                 o
                 m
                 e
                 n
                 t

Fear grows everywhere suspicion
                                     l
                                     u
                                     r
                                     k
                                     s

Yesterday’s mosquito makes tomorrow’s
               g
               h
               o
               s
               t

It’s the season’s ungiving
                                      p
                                      a
                                      n
                                      i
                                      c

No remedy : only the sky’s massive closed door and
                  t
                  i
                  m
                   e
                   l
                   e
                   s
                   s
                   n
                   e
                   s
                   s

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.

ABSENCE

Absence is a lost langage
inaccessible to the present.
Memories arise like a mirage
and the answer to each question
is no answer, although each unknown feather
that falls tips the balance of world .

Absence is a langage reflected
on waves, foam fragile as silhouettes
of angels blown by the wind,
an illusion held somewhere in the past
we shared.

Where do they go, all those lost words,
names, symbols, leaving behind the plea
of take me with you to your bright
forever ?

Listen –

to my icy silence
ripening from blue to green

Live –

each careful second
with the seasons of
my transformation

Elate –

in my diversity
bright, awake, transparent

Warm -

my landscape with the gentle glow
of a lover’s touch

Stroke -

my convoluted stems
my thirsty roots
my fragile blooms
my weary soil


Do all this with bliss,
that I shall endure
and be made whole again,

Climate change

Early autumn, sun’s reticence, too much rain.
Dying roses fall in clusters as fungus pools
in gardens, wetness levening the green.

Frozen mist tightens the air as earth
exhales upwards into a wet bowl
of pale sky, fluid haze heavy with
elements, molecues of water swept
into the gray.

When did autumn come gently,
casting its shadow on an empty bench ?
When did the coolness of air feel
refreshing after summer’s heat ?

Seasons, now violent as war
have overcome the world
with drastic inondation,
acid rain, toxic mud.

How can we look at sunset’s
volatile sky without fear of
tomorrow ?

I long…..
for the night’s youngest moon
when light’s palpitations stroke
immagination.

I long…..
for the gigantic, silent sky,
for dusk’s long erasure into
planet ink.

I long….
To have my eyes filled with stars,
to reveal the hidden image of
our essence where soft words
flow like dew…
And the journey to the end
of rhyme with love passing through.

I long…
for the hidden desire
of the dove’s coo, the nights
of lilac when our bodies,
like heaven and earth, embraced.

Thief of the dark, please come gently
to take your shadow’s nakedness.
There is time enough for tomorrow.

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.

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.

Despair, immeasurable
as shadows perceived
in fading daylight.
Colors of an unseen
rainbow beckoning,
hope just out of reach.

Prayers beyond words –
a bright reflection imagined.
Questions hanging like ghosts
in the atmosphere.

Time without substance,
a moment of breath,
suspence awaiting repetition,
help or comfort.

Speculations about angels’ wings,
darks tunnels, light rivers of love,
and the memory of a story we once believed.
Life, like a stunned bird, held between
invisible hands.

Gone, last year, you’re gone,
as a guilty lover steals away,
No use zipping up the bright
horizon as the day begins again –
your replacement will still barge in.

You’ve grown old, weary, your face
craggy as a mountain, your beard
a wisp of cloud. Time to chase
your end around the world,
your destination everywhere.

Run, old year, to time’s
bartered space, where
the chaos of bewildered atoms
cannot follow. You, who were
only a shadow, a shape of brief
episodes, departed moments,
forgoten yesterdays, a bridge
swept away by momentum’s
transformation.

There is an **** of dark hills
veiled in night’s rapture,
an almost seeing past the blackearth.
Blue stars pour from a window
like a wound open wide where
loneliness seeps in.

There is an abyss that follows
the dove’s plaintive cry, the place
where I lock myself in a dream.

As time billows through
the hours, landscapes fade.
Loneliness, cold, brittle, desperate,
that long white season, is gradually
undone and day opens to make me
whole again.

24 HOURS

Read in reverse --
cupped wingspan of a flying cloud
drinking the brightness of an evening sky ;
Blazing cascade of northern lights, shadow
spaces rare, unguessed meaning of all
that pours longing into empty places of the night.

There are nebula perhaps cradling new stars
in heaven’s secret constellations, radiance
tender and consumming --

then, a drop of sun, goss-layered gossamer
over a rippled veil of shade and light,
dawn shifting irridescense into milky
pink rose refreshes the fraility of soul.

Day’s ardent color makes promises
fading gradually into the curve
of softening dark-- the silver curve
of early moon or the pyrotechnics
of a falling star.

24 hours, a presence constantly moving on,
a marriage of day and night when earth,
moon, sun and we align.