I remember getting THAT call... every second.
I remember the STING of the cold air, against my skin.
The JAGGED stains of dirt on my jeans
When I FELL to the solid ground.
...Like I was just STABBED.
Dirt COVERED my hands, that could be mistaken for blood.

I could HEAR the sound... of my heart shattering.
An EXCRUCIATING wave of pain.
I couldn't BREATH.
Choking out tears & Stifled SOBS, until I was nothing.
But, a SMALL mess on the cold ground.

My eyes flicker OPEN,
"Did I JUST die? Am I dead?"
I FELT dead, and empty.
I feel an AWFUL numbness, take over MY body.
I look AT the sky, through scattered tree limbs.
Specks of WHITE fall on me.
My hot face stings WITH every speck.
...with EVERY newly made snowflake
I now see MY breath in front of me.
Staring at the SNOW as it falls.

I am nothing but a SHELL,
I am NOTHING without her.
I live FOR her.
So... HOW do I learn to, live without.
I wish for DEATH.
But, I get CONSTANT waves of numb and empty pain instead.

I hate HER and I can't stand her.
...But I NEED her.
So, NO matter how much she hurts me.
I'd APOLOGIZE for it, and she's killed me so many times.
That if she got MY blood on HER hands, I'd clean them.

I just CAN'T un-love her.

I’m screaming your name
but no noise comes out.
The air is suffocating
Walls are crashing down around me
I'm lost in this world
It's moving so fast.
Just Blurred lines
solid figures.
I need you to hear me

Even if it was dark, things felt a little bit brighter.
When I laughed, I always felt like I couldn't stop.
When I smiled, she'd smile back.

Now it seems so quiet, but yet so loud.
I'm screaming inside, and I'm kicking and I'm punching.
I'm screaming so loud that I've lost my voice, I can't speak and I can't hear.  I'm just another tree, and I feel like I'm going to fall. Will anyone hear me?

I hear that bitter sweet voice
Sharp and cloying
She's so beautiful
But cold and spiteful
Leaving traces of her touch
"I'll take you away from this"
I won't listen to her
I reach out to something safe
No answer
She gains confidence with every ring
No anwer
"Remember my sweet release"
I try again stretching up clawing out of the pit
No answer
I stop reaching
She has my attention

Chipmunks, squirrels collecting
bitternut hickory, chirping
against a small owl cruising
low beneath the trees.

Everyone has gone this morning
to school or work. Laundry rolling,
carpets vacuumed, cleaning
in the bathroom on my knees.

I'd like to be Whitman, praising
the pure contralto, Wynton practicing
all day. But like my father dying
I cannot hear what I cannot see.

Locally there's politics, processing
points of view. Eventually coming
to a decision, building or not building
windmills on the sky, bridges in the sea.

Insignificant and mighty happenings
seem the same from my vantage ageing
gratefully, inexorably, planning
how to die in my own **** way.

First person singular prohibited. In order
to be more crow.
War! war! war! war! war!

Then there's that lowland wetland bird
around the stunted red pines crying
Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.

Hear the redwing blackbird chirring
Her, her, her... she
as one might expect, Spring.

Words for birds
since they're inaccessible. Aim
binoculars left, right, up, down, missing every time.

At the piano recital
Aaron made the penguins run, run, run, not waddle,
from a hungry polar bear!

Everything passes, even a massacre,
but birds outlast cars
and words like chemical and holocaust.

Woodpecker climbs oak,
Connecticut.
Not one neighbor heard the knocking.

The voice of a pewee
whose nest has fallen out of the tree.
Oh my! Oh me!

What did the wood thrush sing
that summer evening
teaching its young thrush meanings?

No cows to look at
I hear the truck traffic

Everything changes like clouds
The page this poem is on burns

Coming from the funeral with friends
Talking on the telephone

No trucks to grind their gears
I hear the minute hand moving

Birds and people inhabit the earth
A black bear inhabits the earth, too

A rock in the sun
Calligraphy brush

In a mind there is apocalypse
No one can hear it

Caramel leaves fell as the wind shifted,
to spell the first days of Autumn.
The sun was shot westward,
hovering over the blue marble
as it radiated with playful heat
that waned out of sharp boredom.
One by one, each tree became bare
like the sound of a lonely metronome.
And within the cold isolation,
each tree said it found peace.