There are symphonies I'll
never hear
and books
I'll never
read
paintings that I'll never get to
stand in front and
see

There are feelings that
are foreign
and there are goals I won't
endeavor
-summers that will fade away,
desert me in the
heather

There are roses in a field of
gold:
air I'll never
breathe,
I've so many
decisions that
I don't even
feel free

I see a path at
the end of a road, hidden by
thickets of blackberries about
to blossom through the night
where shadows veil their violet colors,
those blushing, berry brides.

Your fingers are red from
cherries and port
and there's a pile of pits in
a bowl on the
table

and the light over
head
burnt out
last week, so we keep on
lighting a
yankee candle

Between your fingers, you
roll a stem, cherry stem,
then stem,
then stem

Your lips are stained rouge
from cherries and port,
and I am
in love
with
them

I could buy the
ticket,
and I could throw
away
the key

I could sell all of my jewelry and my rare
mahogany

I could make it
in Vienna,
I could make it in
Peru

I could hitch a ride to anywhere and
still not know what
to do

I could stay inside
this duplex
on this couch missing
a spring

I swear I could forget it all
to discover everything.

There are a lot of things that
I don't want to know

guns being held like infants

people being poisoned like mice

children being taken like a shot of
whiskey in the
night

There are a lot of things that I
didn't want to know,
and you know why.

dogs being chained like anchors

the poor being treated like empty
space

civilians murdered routinely like cleaning my
sink with
bleach

clean me out with bleach.
Distill me.
Douse me in holy water
or lye

There are a lot of things
I don't want to know,

I read the news
and
cry.

Lightening whispers
and thunder cracks
I don't know the resonance of
black

the rain chit-chats
and the rivers sing
I do not hear a voice in
spring

I am silent
and you're outspoken
I don't remember a sound called
heartbroken.

When the world is quiet
and the street lights are
gold
there aren't enough words for the
stories I've heard

When the sun is descending
and the lamps flicker
on
there aren't enough minutes to
talk until dawn

When the sky is an ink spot
and the stars are
revealed
there aren't enough words to
explain how
I feel.

I'm sitting in a
ship,
at sea-
slowly letting my
pale skinned legs
be carried like
a buoy

my eyes need time to
adjust to
you and
all of the sea-sun that you
bring

I now understand
the seagull's cry,
the starboard's run,
how my fears are a
bigger mast than
my longings
and that
waiting for a
Rogue wave
won't change the
direction that
I'm going.

The moths fly in
to catch the
light
because I leave
the windows
open.
I find them
fallen on my
sill,
hard and crisp
as death-
dried flowers
losing color,
fading away.

I always leave
my windows open
and let everything
in.

the animals
the light
the smoke from a
neighbor's chimney
or a fire burning
far away-
the moths
the wasps
the black beetles and
gnats
friendships and
falling outs and
you.

you are not excluded.

I always keep my
porch light on,
my windows propped
up
letting the world see
everything I am,
slither in,
crawl in,
waltz or
saunter in I
still
can't shut
the
window

I'm so afraid of
everything leaving the way
it comes:

suddenly
suddenly
suddenly through an
open window

and here I am trying
not to be a
moth
who looks for the light and a
rip in the screen,
and gets too close
and flies in, head first
without restraint,
she incinerates

Life is so bright and
I am so open,
propped open,
stationary and
liberated

as an open window.

If I could
be witchy
and preserve
the taste in
my mouth
after your
kiss,
I would put on
sanguine lipstick
and
never bat my
eyes again.

We sat on the sagging,
green plaid couch
across from
a candle-filled coffee table
drinking Absinthe in their
light

and your arm was
around my
shoulders where
I'm quite sure
it belongs

& a Renaissance Chorus played
from your
computer where
the dissonance was
melting me like
sugar on the
Absinthe spoon-

It was Wednesday
and the moon was full
and it was my last
April in Oregon
and my first April
in love with someone
sillier than I.

Here is where
I resign.

Almost to
the end of the
path who's
nudging nature's
lullaby

I choose my
resignation
submitting,
I'll accept
what comes:

Poison oak or
a bed of Crocus
covering the
untouched floor
who bears the
weight of me

Here's my resignation,
love,
beneath Cascadian trees.

I forgot to tell you
that I'm not happy-
today when I was
walking and
an hour in, my
neck was
sweating in the
overcast heat,

I saw a patch of
wisteria, painted
with a stirring
of bees- I thought about
the silence
and the blanket of
sadness
and how I
cannot share with you a
quiet agony
of stagnation.

I'm the three minutes
where the
sun is lifting the sheets
and crawling into
bed-
the subtle exhale,
a strip of green,
the squinting of
eyes
when she's pulling the
covers over
her
head,
the three minutes
where she cannot fight
the sleep but
her quiet slumber
her burst of color
her repetitive-day-in-and-day-out
behavior
is the romance of tucking in
linen and
allowing herself
to fade and saturate
again

Sometimes
when I'm
mixing paint,
and my tired hands
are moving in their silent
rotation, stirring two,
three, four
pigments together,
I wonder:
why
colors come
together
(like they
do)
and how my aging bones can
possibly hold
a paintbrush
(like
they do)
and when I sit in front of
your easel
and I put paint on a
naked
canvas
I wonder:
how it's
possible
that things can
come together
(like they
do-)

that things can fade
or remain,
(and they do-)

how every piece of art is
the perpetual
portrait
of togetherness,

and how they
manage to
move me,
(like they do)

If you leave me
please leave me
quietly
without lengthy explanations
or "one last kiss"

without telling me
you love me
or that I
changed you
how could I have changed you?
and that you'll always
care

If you leave me,
just leave me.
Just tell me the way it
is
without beating around the
******* bush
and making excuses
and promises

If you leave me,
leave me quietly- in few words
so I can
replay it
later
in the cinema of
my thoughts
without
mistake.

When you run,
you run
alone across the
places that I
wander in my
head
when you run,
you run
alone, for me, to the ridge

where I never miss
a sunset
and the bikes fly by
graffitied underpasses
like grey winged
cranes
hesitant to
leave the ground
after a morning
flight

When you run, you
run for me
and I can't
help but feel the
pulsing of your
heart in the rapids of
Amazon Creek