The old man who visits
in December and is loaded
with blustery showers
has forgotten us.

Lady July who enjoys
dancing in creek beds
draped in ferns and flowers
now has eczema instead.

The summer of smile
and flush I know well
has unexpectedly
become a dance with fire.

I tell the stillness
of an inner hand
to listen for the
celebration of clapping.

I tell a hand
that holds and spills
temple thoughts
to drink from a
pen of communion.

I tell an incomplete
fist to discontinue
angry tightening
and grasp the best
possible opposite.

I tell a bending
orchestra of knuckles
to discern the source,
and the difference
between imprisonment
and blessed solitude.

I tell a waving
wrist to genuflect
for the safe passage
of afternoon thunderstorms.

I tell a pointy index
to return the wild indication
to a form that is
acquainted and most
familiar.

Some lost flower part
sparks into my vision
field today. The abrupt
edge of a prepared land
welcomes the color
and new shy stock.

Neighboring higher
life forms succumb
to delicate nibbling,
after the moon 's squinting
dance partner settles into
the vicious dust.

My long tube of
garden fluid
appears each effervescent
morning to envelope
the rooty darkness
with a fill of
such precious sipping.

In shorter daily periods
what is left dwindling
below is yanked from
an unfruitful oblivion
and added
into the content of a
pleasant April uprising.

If I could boast in simple eloquence
of distant, ancient names of stars
that exploded, and became dust,
and became earth,
and became me,
I would willingly jot them
down for our study.

Only this tall clay pile
is what I know of the moment.
And the next moment
may be much like this.

If the celestial proper noun
should suddenly ring out across
a sleepy or forgotten cosmos,
I promise that I shall
not hold it in
like some verbal fossil,
but shall release it
into our waiting essence.

My hand empties the sun
in a long angled streak
across my inherited nose.

I spread fingers to watch
the slim darkness multiply
in the midst of my
usual countenance.

Shoeless toes cannot
do the same–a limitation
of any species’ anatomy,
but if they could

I would step on
soft gray pavement
with a promising
spectrum of curiosity.

July rain
in a year of drought
as I plant peas
in the new garden
I have spent months
building in
expectation.

The sky has been quiet
and I have been thinking
peas
and maybe the zucchini
will bring change
and blessing.

I dreamed last night
of my parents’ new home–
the one they inhabited
when they left me
behind on earth.

This new soil is
yielding such discovery.
What else, I wonder,
should be planted?

A pumpkin-colored limo arrives at the curb
of the black-and-white gala. Housemaid
overnight transformed to debutante
strides from the rear door to overwhelm

the party of common beauties. How
all gasp to view the delicacy of each
step in her long-gown procession to
the powerful, polished, marble floor of nobility.

There, unknown to the grand society, she twirls
and touches fingertips to those of the
ambassador, who is looking not for goodness,
but for beauty, who is believing the two

come together in one body here on earth.
The swelling, graceful energy that will
be passed on to future story-loving ears
rips apart the subdued elegance of the night.

Before the middle of the darkness, she slips
out of society’s sight, given over to a
sacred vow that only she can understand–
a transformative voice that guides her hours.

An object, much like my own body, connects
the spheres of magical and practical,
of night-time dreaminess and day-time
weariness–that sliver of land I understand.

Then a foot-hold on earth, a lost shoe, a link
to all evening romance, presides over
the public sentiment. Citizens desire
to align themselves with everlasting goodness.

Out of the cinders of hot fire gone cold
and lost, the steadfast inquiry continues,
until we arrive at the judgment that frees
us from our poverty and enslavement.

A single, white shoe may lift us
and step us toward such bliss.