Notes of rain
on a tin roof
mystify me

I try to put words
to its meaning

As if it is a calling
I listen to its tune

There, sometimes
like a scent of remorse,
a violet storm

Or a flash of a smile
so brilliant it pains

Night stirs the colors
about me with its ladle

But I can’t paint fables
or the whispers that follow

Dreams of love seem so real
for such a short time

I mean to imply something
larger, more inclusive,
grounded and wild

Something that reaches back
into stories we can never tell

Because we are the arc of them,
we are their breathing

Beaching ourselves on lonely shores
wanting only to be saved.

Whitewashed fences mark
the division of shallow lines
of demarcation marring a bitter plain

Truth that too can be seen
as a balance with bruised knees
whispering prayers of bent supplication

Looking for a smile seen in clouds
of judgment and blurred hazes

The drum beats of life and echoes still,
in cracked addicted alleys of fairness
gone awry with a broken wheel
spinning on a loom of time

Native pains and naive indiscretions inexcusable, earth telling a compelling
tale if you can dig your hand in the dirt

Seeking through the mire for truth
and tales long since buried in the sands
of time, which whisk away history,
books burned with lies full of distaste

Imprinted on impressionable minds
like miscreant clones sprung
from fanatical factories

Indoctrinated with false education
and breeding still more hate, echoing,
listening to the heartstrings playing
a concerto of truth, an aria of sad realism

A beating of a drum
that has long since been silenced
by an oppressive, regressive hand

These times give me fear when courage
is what is needed most, post haste

Hate seems to be in such a fury
hurrying at a madman's pace.

I should silence
this troublesome whispering
inside my heart

I've already considered
the plain facts
of absence

Falling headlong
into its gorge
too soon

Not knowing who might
drown in their own eyes
night after night

It's not my wish to punish
or pain another soul
beyond my own.

I dream of white
winds blowing,
like dogwood
petals, or snow.

This is the longest
I’ve been so close
to you on a sheet
of papered dreams.

Like you, death,
these poems
about you, come
as no surprise.

Close to the last page
between the covers,
still I think I’ll need
at least one other.

I hoped before
I could let you go,
before I hoped
the white winds blow.

I do not know whose eyes perceive
my finite movement toward light.

Each letting go, a small cry,
each forward move my life's
migratory assurance of what
none of us can ever know.

The genetic certainty of cells
propels the forebrain
with its stumbling feet,
while a heartache of hope
wins each moment even
as it is lost to the next.

And we must accept
the impermanent flow
that is like air, necessary
and sacred; tears are not
the only salt of sorrow.

I don't know what
the limits are
what impacts fragment
beyond repair, outside the web
of what there are words for,
murderous facts that leave mute
witnesses’ souls brittle
inside their chests,
as the thousandth child starves
somewhere in our inhumane
universe another star grows dark.

To live a life in perspective
I’m told you need to define a horizon
line eye level to the viewer.

From my hill of years the view is fluid
as in watery, but also as in unpredictable.

On the sea’s face a wall of fog moves in
and out like histories remembered
and forgotten.

Sometimes silver striates the sea
with such a glitter of insight
I am bedazzled and cannot look.

Sometimes fogbank and ocean merge
with such blue-gray unity it seems
the horizon rises so that I stand on
the shore, dwarfed by a surf of knowledge
that pounds at my ignorance.

Sometimes the sea becomes invisible,
the white air a questioning emptiness,
a finger-touch of damp against the cheek.