Some days in crowded streets,
Loud restaurants,
Drunk wedding receptions,
Laying on the grass,

   I look at my hands.
   They move in light and shadow
   Trompe l’oeil religion.
    
If I see them,
Believe in them,
Or trust them?

The canvas,  
The beach,  
The borderline,
The liminal space where my body is  

[mine]

A pause in rain
A book as company
The beach full of families

Cairns on an empty beach
To remind the waves
The flat grisaille rocks,
Mosaic crushed shells
Of the steps I took to the lake.

From the beach full of families,
Through a driftwood jungle,
To the empty apartment fold out bed.
Blinds that cut the red setting sun  
Into striations of hunger,
Waning trees on the third floor  
An echoing chamber
Open apartment balcony.

Rain on the night highway
Like constellations  
Guiding me at sea
Agitated sleep in a field of asphalt  
Fluorescent ribs on the grey car interior

Crossing state borders,
Into purple 6am skies
The sunlight starts the engine,  
Warming me from sleeping town cafes

The state park is empty this early
As light tilts from under the bridge
Empty roads and seagulls  
I start walking to keep the image untouched
10 miles later, I’ve seen redemption
In turquoise water
And concrete caverns  

I spread a blanket on the grass under a willow tree.
This is a scene I will paint---






I open my book, regarding the glass surface of the water.
Century-old footsteps listen to the shoreline,
The ancient murmurs connecting  
freedom from servitude  

I feel the cool water surround their feet
As they leave all they’ve ever known
Into a new country,
Sending a love letter to their family.

As I look up from my book,
Where they once stood,
Strangers smoke under the trees.

I sit next to small crescent shadows
Delightful celestial fragments
Soak the ground under the tree

There are people in the lake:
Swimming into the obscured lagoon
Totality opens as crickets start to sing
  Awakening a brief transition into twilight
The lake is still as gazes draw upward,
Separating ourselves from the earth
Eclipse watchers float in the serene.

    



It was the day when shattered plate shadows spread like the root system of a tree
Across the country and onto my wooden front porch


I was 18
Our shadows sewn together on the earth.

I write letters,
Painted during golden hour.  Dimmer in the trees.  I must remind myself of it.
Walking up the fire escape and looking at the stars, I knock on the window, he looks gentler.
The most beautiful day here yet; the colors break down from pixels to prayers.
In person, virtual, ambivalent depths of shadow.
Peaceful and sincere, I need the essence of it.



I hope you’re having peaceful dreams,  
Smoke from burning mint,
Shakey & slow
Push energy back in me
What speaks colors in you

An oil spill underneath the ceiling light,
When you close your eyes, I am sunlight on water.
The reflection of my tears were colors
Gentle reminders to love.

If you ever miss me remember I didn’t walk away,  
I laid on the grass in the sun & watched the clouds,
Building cairns in the stream.


I was painting on the floor in your room,
It was raining in the basement hallway outside.
The walls were mirrors,
Trees and vines grew up your white walls
A foggy night and a stream formed outside your window
Where I snow fall for the first time.

A few days before summer break,
We went cliff jumping and it was warm again.

It is always lightly raining with open windows when we sleep together
There will always be more growing and learning
In your absence.

The sun is setting and I’m not alone—
We hiked to the middle of the Appalachian trail,
I don’t know who I am  
But the colors are moving
Nothing has felt so pristine.

On top of white rocks,
This is not a dream.  
A ridgeline where we lay our coats on the diagonal granite
Hands lightly touch on cold stone
Over pristine valleys of moving trees
Stretching from the blue ridge mountains.

My heart is not falling—it is ascending  
Like the summit,
Like the valley below
Floating in space
On the spirit of boulders, we scramble up with open hands.
Covered in delicate bonsai roots
Connecting the longest trail in the world,
Two thousand miles between us but we’ve never been closer
   In a warm car, floral turtlenecks, squares of paper
  I close my eyes because it’s too much
And the sun is gone.

Waiting as the leaves float above us  
Delicate joints forgive gravity
As the ground shifts beneath  
Bed of grass

Are you happy?  The wind is blowing north.  You are not a burden.

Warm sassafras earthen outlines
Wispy milkweed nebula within the path
Leaping into further fields,
Splendid happenings in our house of clay,
Sculptures of pure weightlessness.

The rain will come at 4, so we watch the field.
Like the early morning,
The first night,
The windows down, the hills, the trees, feeling safe, feeling missing, feeling music  
Shimmer down the back of my neck.  
Feeling isolation, too little, too much, nothing, everything.  
Meanings are alienated: her ideas connected to mine.
Ambient colors blend in swatches of light.  
The artist stands up, spills the paint, smears the light.
Art is for souls written in silhouettes.



We run barefoot in grass,
Towards the approaching gray
Blades cling to glistening legs like strikethrough text.
Self and ego unite
Thoughts drift as leaves suspended in the rising stream
This rain is an unfinished thought.

The pressure change comes like a broken bone.  
Trillium wildflowers parallel the ravine
Delicate white bodies bend
As warmth is pushed higher,
Water condenses and falls:

Time is places and places are time
Sleeping in old beds,  
Scents of warmth,  
Snow collected over antique film
A garden buried in hibernation,
Sleeping yet seeing
Withering velvet songs underground
Echo in pastel church bell skies.
They taste of light,  
They dream of dawn.
I am not in the garden, it is myself.  It is him.
The cathedral glass swells,
Growing and shrinking like the stars.


Memories  
of dancing in the  
kitchen, steam from boiling pots  
of water hanging on  
windows open to  
pine trees,  
muffled songs.  


Memories of falls petrified in ice.  We climbed a fire tower, slipping between steep planks of lumber to the top of the fall sunset, the moonrise, a red disk on the open horizon.  
He is playing chess.  My mind is quiet.  I have made my bed.
The colors stretch into a fine line- white light permeates the new home.