Perfect morning scene
Full quality of light
Fruit tree flowers flush
So very pink against
A sky so very blue

Honey jasmine air
Star petals frosty white
Burning bottle brush
with scarlet flames not quenched
by glinting candy dew

Leaves drink up the sun
See all the clocks
In all the trees
Sense shifting balance favour
less the nighttme, more the day

Triumphant feeling flows
The equinox
In quiet passing
Led to colours loudly telling
that the light will have its way

Impossible despair
When nature shines like this
Warming every part
From gloomy winter shade
To hibernating cheer

A message penned in glow
Unable to resist
Thaws the chilly heart
Where sprouting joy is made
And bliss is running clear

Less the nighttime, more the day
The light will have its way
Now spring is here

a woman's passion is a fiction of the sun
a radiance that forms and lingers
it's time burning like a rag in a guttering flame
it flickers, it spits a storm, a moment's certainty
a lifetime's doubt
it is the whisper of the wind in barren trees
a crucible for gravity's fervor
a silence dreaming its imploded sounds

I could have gone to the cemetery,
or back to my high school lab,
find him lecturing from a podium,
bony finger raised,
demagogue of the dead.
I could break him down piece by piece,
cram him in a duffle,
a femur jutting the zipper.
Ignore the groan-
Skeletons are
by nature
never satisfied.

Instead I found myself
in the carnival lot,
The dog was long dead,
the sign kept guard.
Rusty rides slouched like tumbleweeds.
Cotton candy in memory-
blue tack crunching my teeth.
Lewd.

Skeletons fixed on poles,
spiked up through pelvis and spine.
Use ****.
Grip shoulders. twist. lift.
When one slid free,
he collapsed into my arms
all bone-light, lovely,
mine at last.

I just brought him home.
Sat at the kitchen table.
Named him Curly.
Zoom howled: WAG’s gone weird!
What’s his name? What’s his name?

His name is Curly,
I said, but I knew
his name was You.

We drink wine by the pool.
He never sips.
Sometimes I pour a second glass for the glint.
Sometimes he tells me Danny Elfman
wants to play his ribs like a xylophone.
Sometimes he sighs,
he hates Oingo Boingo.
I laugh. Obliging.
So do I.

When the wind kicks up
he smells of sugar and rust.
Sometimes he rattles the glassware.
Sometimes he won’t sit still.
Skeletons are
by nature
never satisfied.

I think I'm afraid to be a mother.
Because what I they leave,
Like she did.
What if I die,
Like she did.
What if I leave them broken,
Like she did.

A Christian Poem of Anticipation in the Everyday

The kingdom comes while socks are spun,
while toast is burnt, while errands run.
Not in trumpets, not in gold,
but in the stories we retold.

The Spirit stirs in morning tea,
in traffic jams and lost car keys.
The sacred hides in mundane grace,
a whispered prayer, a wrinkled face.

We wait for Christ, but not in vain,
He walks with us through drizzle rain.
He hums along to laundry’s beat,
and blesses crumbs beneath our feet.

So let the kettle sing its song,
the waiting makes our hearts grow strong.
For joy is not some distant prize,
it’s God with us, in daily guise.

Dawn trembles the glass-
in stillness, a split:
shadow knotted to bone,
light breaks forward.

In my yard a house sparrow-
one wing bent up,
the other folded under-
the body decides.

Ordinary in death:
storm, wire, hunger.
No trumpets, no song-
just the drone of flies.

I reach for the light,
palm raised;
my shadow carries the bird.

I apologize for a world
that could not keep you.

I apologize for the rapture of ego
that left you.

If we must speak of deliverance,
I want a god with no promises,
no threats, only this:

a shovel,
a tree,
and someone
to do the digging.

Clouds of pain

cover the wounds

of the heart.

Innocent tears fall

like gentle drops

of rain.