When I See Your Eyes

When I see your eyes,
I want to be there,
where your window soul
stares back at me.
Touch me,
I will touch you back,
hands holding hands
captive in your arms,
captive in your heart,
and the years together
spread out before us,
stretching from our now,
until our forever.

James E. Roethlein copyright 2021

Of a Day a Lifetime Ago

A man,
a rifle,
a Dallas motorcade,
and then,
a nation mourning

James E. Roethlein copyright 2020

I Will Never Write My Obituary

I bleed before the world
in many different ways,
by rocks and knives
and paper cuts,
sometimes it is blue
sometimes it is red,
every time it feels real,
because it really is.
I bleed before the world,
cutting myself open
that it may read the entrails
through what my poetry says.
But this (upon reflection) is not
what will be written of me
after I have died
and it only concerns me now
while I am still alive.

James E. Roethlein copyright 2020

silence creates music
darkness creates light
the good makes the bad
and wrong allows for right

without up there is no down
if we don't die we aren’t alive
a breath in is a breath out
and in departing we will arrive

all memory melts -  
like ice -
into a sea of water
never look twice
you read
the signals right

Birds cry and sing in the still-dark,
commit to living one more winter’s day.
In sleeping rooms their heartache finds me
building nests for injured things.
  
I will lock the door when I leave-
and carry their heartache with my own.
I will pilfer light from a low-rolling Sun and
siphon-off peace from the sea.

(I will love, I will love, I will love)