She rises at dawn, chilled
by the lost embrace
of her sleeping pills, brushes

summer's blown ashes
with the shuffle of footsteps
on old stone floors.

She thaws her hands
around a coffee cup,
sits at her desk,

 ******* Ariel             arrowed from
 yesterday's tide           hoof-printing  
ocean waves                 jetting barnacles
telephone wires            a man's black boot

routing them through
cold English mornings,
a gold Sheaffer pen.

Words seep
across the page,
trail toxins of grief.

Light edges
between churchyard yews,
fingertips the curtains.

A thumb's worth
of breast-milk
stains her nightgown.

Poetry is a mirror of our soul but also a window to the outside world---that which is external and tangible--neither is complete without the other
but it's only the inner side of us that understands the deeper meaning of life and all things.  It's strange but true---the intangible is mysterious, profound and has power and resources latent within us--most of which we aren't even aware---until kindled and brought to light by the muse of poetry.  Then a clear light dawns upon us and we begin to see and understand things better.  The 'physical we' is, in my view,  of lesser significance than the 'abstract we' or should I say the 'essential we'?---that which can be seen, handled or articulated is only the periphery of truth and things but not the core--we are larger than what we think  but we don't grasp this as we are lost in the banality and humdrum of daily life--we are walking shadows rather than light and fall short of our real potential. Talking of language and music, Felix Mendelssohn wrote (my paraphrase):
words mean less to me than music and it's music that speaks clearer to me.
        All said, man is a mystery as life is but they intersect--at every point.

I thought you were beautiful

Not shallow beauty,
Skin deep
The kind of beautiful like the sun
Shining on a tree leaf
Showing its veins

Beautiful like,
The sound of a creek
After a good storm

Like the feel of a summer breeze
On the back of my neck

I held you in awe

You were the mist,
Rising off the lake on a cool morning
The view from the top of my mountain,
In the fall when the leaves are colored

You were the violin music
Playing softly while I danced
The colors oil makes on the street
Just after it rains and the light hits it

I was nothing
A ghost,
In the darkest corridors of your haunted house
The typo on an old type writer,
Needing white out

I thought you were beautiful

A square is the earth.
A circle,
the heavens above,
the spinning stars.

That which is wide
yet bounded on all sides
is home.
It is that which sustains us.

The earth.
The earth is beautiful oh!
Do come and see!