Did you see
My portrait?

Tiny figure in a corner of
Mountains and lakes

This is who I am

Small

Not

Insignificant

When moon like an empty plate
mocks the hunger
the famished bones hunt for a morsel.

Clinks of cutlery fires the belly
aroma of meals calls like a melody

there's a table full of happy faces
chewing and chuckling and chattering
picking eating dropping and littering
their plates are full aha never less
food after food over food always
a fire in oven a bed of clean sheet
never they're they're never short of heat
eyes that are heavy droop easy soon
behind tightly shut windows to the moon.

Snuffed out will ***** out all traces of light
they break into wails rending the night
nothing now moves over the dead town
except the bones with moon as the crown.

narrow potholed roads
long winding switchbacks
blind corners that lead
the chosen to heaven

the rest of us
sinners

rotting slash piles
in a clear cut
fireweed rising
from raw earth

in this land of trees
the forest is forgotten

songs of wild skies
where the sea’s ghosts
gather wave and mist,
where the dark sea
drifts and the wind
scatters petals
curves the rushing
of a tide that longs
to be free, waits
waits forever to
dream.