Does every word come
dripping from
your mouth, immortal?

You rare oddity
Spinning me open
As if I were air on fire

How you would gather
yourself up
like you were
something irrelevant
in my presence

Oh shy but fluent bird
Tell me of what lovers bring
Tell me you were Shakespeare
Whispering in my ear

In my passing
what will they say
as they gather round the death display
will they shed a tear
for this pallid face
or feign a moment of silent grace
the final glances
the final sighs
the final light on sleeping eyes
the coffin closed
the voices fade
I watch them walk from Sun to shade
back to their homes
back to their lives
where perhaps a piece of me survives

Barnacles begin their lives as free-swimming larvae, ebbing and flowing with the tide.  
Most are eaten, some wash ashore, a few survive long enough to attach
with freakishly strong glue their minute larvae heads to a final rock- strewn home.
There they spend the rest of their lives with feathery feet poking out of a hardened shell, filtering the sea for whatever happens to come within reach.

Why the barnacle starts out free
and ends up bonded to some god-forsaken rock
to alternately dry out and be fed at the whim of the tide
is just one of life's many small mysteries.

While barnacles are meant to lead a primarily static life
human beings are not.
We are meant to flow
to settle and ground, uproot and travel
to seek
to speak well and listen better
to find meaningful answers.

We always have the choice to let go
of whatever safe, high ground we're frantically clinging to
though it will mean not knowing where we'll ultimately wash ashore.

Letting go can feel like being caught in a rip current.  
What I know about rip currents:
They pluck hapless beachgoers from shore and pull them out to the ocean deep.  
If you're caught in one and try swimming back to blessed land
you won't make any headway.
Eventually you'll grow tired and drown.

The only way to survive is to stroke like mad
in a totally counterintuitive direction
parallel to the solid ground you desperately want to reach
until you're out of the narrow river ******* you out to sea.

I've decided to unglue my little larvae head
from its rocky, self-imposed, falsely-safe perch.
Let the current carry me where my feet no longer touch the known.

It's up to me to swim in the right direction until I'm free.

I wish that I
was filled with stars
intricate, intimate arrays
to guide me to the edge
of myself and beyond

my soul
the brightest
in a unique constellation
of my naming

my love
many-hued nebula
expanding
to fill the void

my losses
supernovas
both beautiful
and tragic

But I am not
celestial
earth-bound
I must navigate

by stroke of skin
whiff of memory
trace of sadness
night vision

rudimentary compasses
in a sea of misunderstanding.

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive.

Be aware that the velvet sage
of the leaves belies their power
to take over every space, remember
roots burrow deep, anchoring in
fissures we don’t even know exist.

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.