My mother died alone in the nursing home.
That sweet mouth that once whispered
comfort to my child's ear when I cut a lip,
scraped a knee, or suffered my first heartbreak,
was now open to the world, awkwardly caught
in a gasp for one more precious breath of life.

She so richly deserved my presence that day,
and paid in advance with tears over the years,
as I wasn't always the son I should have been.
This was a visit which was not afforded
because something, something very asinine
on television kept me from her bedside
on that final morning of her precious life.

The news came in a sympathetic phone call.
"Sorry Mr. Gossett, but your mother has died."
I continued staring deeply, analytically at
something, something on the television
that morning, wondering if this was really how her life
should have ended, so alone, with dead eyes staring
to the side, still hoping to see the son who was
too engrossed to be there. I'm sorry, mother,
one last time I have to tell your how sorry I am.

--

If only he could paint what he feels
deep within, and not just what he sees,
his paintings would be transcendent.
But anymore, what he feels is elusive, hidden
somewhere beyond the descriptive,
beyond the stroke of his brush and the
complexities of his paint, beyond his ability
to put emotion and insight to canvas.

He's begun to question himself,
no longer the confident painter but now
far too introspective and unsure of his talent,
a talent that used to reveal itself with flare,
color and a successful style. Melancholy
has set in, frustrating any attempts
to get beyond the feeling of hopelessness.

Someone who would never equate
himself with the great painters, knowing
the limits of his own talent, he
nevertheless wonders - could this
be how Van Gogh felt in his despair?

--

Oh spring,
if you were but mortal,
or better yet, that I

was the May breeze,
you and I could make
such passionate love,

for I have long been
enamored by you.
Like loving fingers

through cascading hair,
I would weave magic
in your meadow grasses

and flowering trees.
I would move over your
greening landscapes

with a most ardent touch
and spread the intoxicating
fragrance of your

blossoms as a priceless
perfume for the only
one I could ever truly love.

I would caress your
billowing clouds, ferrying
them gently about, and

we would lie naked upon
their undulating waves
and allow the sun to warm us.

God, what a dreamer! What
a spell spring has cast.
Oh, if I were but the breeze.

Another spring poem I thought
I would put before you -
perhaps bring some warmth into
the reading

---

Gliding just above the aspen thickets,
nearly scraping their golden canopies,
I cling to this exquisite dream hawk
for all it's worth. Dipping and hovering
as the hawk is prone to do, I am soaring
with the updraft to where the air grows
thin, I'm becoming faint, and the world below
is somehow irrelevant. I can even see my
disheveled bed below where I lie dreaming.
Gliding, soaring, hovering, in my dreams
of flying I soar tree-level and prefer gliding.
I fear falling at the upper heights, but
this time, in this dream, I am become brave,
choosing instead to challenge the cumulus
and with no fear loosen "the surly bonds".
--

She walks as though she were a queen,
this woman who walks beside me - head
held high, chin up, striding confidently.
If she is a queen what does that make me?
I am no king, certainly not much at all
in my reckoning, but still she walks with me,
occasionally taking my hand in hers.
She must think more of me than do I -
how could I not treat her like a queen?

--

autumn wind –
it's the ground's turn
to display leaves

--

he'd forgotten
how many years it'd been . . .
falling leaves

--

falling leaves –
many sad memories
gathering today


.

I feel that familiar guilt everytime
my shadow darkens her headstone.
Ever the errant son, my visits
to her grave come once a year -
Memorial Day, penitentially, flowers
in hand. However, the preacher
said her soul is no longer here
so I've adopted that rationale.
Mom, I know you're not supposed
to be there, but if you are,
forgive me, again. Your son.

--

The wild geese overhead
follow their instinct, know
where they came from,
know where they must go.
They follow not the errant wind
but their own natural course –
so much more real purpose
than man.

--

God, how I hate these reflections,
these abhorrent reflections,
not just the one in the mirror,

but the reflections of my life
clattering around in my brain.
I could shower, shave, slap a mask

over this aging face,
this wretched, etched face,
but what to do about regrets

for all those wasted years?
The *****, the drugs, the
remorse over lost relationships?

Time goes on, and didn't someone
once say that time heals?
Now there's a hell of a laugh!

It doesn't necessarily heal -
if you're not careful
it produces more to regret.

Regrets are compounded and
pain becomes razor-sharp, relentless
with the advance of time.

And I've got time on my hands -
its defilement won't wash off.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall" . . .

or should it be "memory, memory"?
Is it absolutely necessary I go through
this ever time I stand before you?

--

The night holds no sway over me,
for I am darker by double
the darkest of night shadows.
This heart has come to no other
purpose than to prolong life,
having years before given over
any love, belief, good ambition.
Wail as you might, night winds,
rage against this hardened heart,
for it shall no longer be moved
to fear nor to cater to hope.

Apparently the encoaching winter
has put me in a darker mood.

The old dog drags his tired, sore
body into his familiar curl beside
my chair, sighs heavily and enters
once again that dream where
he runs carefree and painlessly
through the sweet meadow grass,
a meadow known only to him
and the newly-young man following.

--

He used to eat them up, wives that is -
sweet, delicate things who gave him
their hearts, three in all over the dark years,
destined sooner or later to look deep
into his black eyes and know the desolation
they offered, to begin comprehending
the cold chasm of pain to which their
innocence and credulity had brought them.

Today two of the former wives stood
an appropriate distance from his grave
and the milling stand of mourners,
immediate family to be sure, and those
who tried but could find nothing else
to do on this blustery day. The ex-wives
each scooped a handful of damp earth
and threw it with spiteful satisfaction
into the gaping mouth of his grave.
"Eat that", one was heard to say.

--

Oh, the sadness in your beloved eyes, that
woeful turn from bright blue to grey, and
the callous years engraved across your face.
Dear God, but that I could reverse the slow,
methodical spin of earth and cruel time,
take us both back to when our passion
for each other burned hot and there was
no purpose in this world but our purpose.

--

Fearsome dream: I'm cocooned below, facing heavenward,
          but my face no longer senses nor melts
the frozen snowflakes that once were my pleasure.
          Now those flakes swirl aimlessly, unfelt in the blue-black
uncaring night of winter, barely touching my grave,
blown about by the frigid January wind  -
          dead to those sensations, I lay hard, cold, slowly rotting.

--

A fly, aware of possibilities
beyond the picture window,
taps incessantly on the glass
but cannot reach them.
The older I become the more
I feel like a miserable fly
at an impossible window. How
unfair it is, this aging process,
this melting down of tissue and
disintegration of bone and sinew,
this deterioration, cell by cell;
this loss of vigor and ambition.

--

I would hope to die early
should I grow too old to dream,
to believe in something,
anything, or feel the red-hot surge
of ambition and love's pulsing.

--

She stares into her canvas, drawing
to her brush a blood-red droplet
of paint for another flower, her hands
delicate, as diaphanous as the wings
of a white butterfly, with blue veins
running a precious lace-like pattern
from her thin fingers to her heart.
She knew she didn't have long to live,
but death was uncharacteristically
slow in fulfilling itself, as she sought
week by week to finish her painting.
Not a masterpiece, I sensed, and
perhaps not even intended
to be finished, but instead a sweet,
wonderful journey of the heart, as if
retracing a memory-strewn path
back to her beginning. She paused
at times in her wanderings along the
sunlit path of that canvas, too ill
to leave her bed, or looking upon
the world from a hospital window,
the shadows of her death intensifying.
The last time she was able to paint
she seemed aware that her death
was near, and thanked God for the years
allotted her. She died several days later,
her canvas, her life, largely incomplete
but her true journey now underway.

*(For Dorothy, my painting partner,
who died Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010)

autumn lake –
leaves rocking
in a trout's ripples

--

birdsong –
how it amplifies
the dawn

The constricting walls reflect nothing,
allow nothing, it's simply the dusty
depression of a room within
a house within a failed marriage,
barren of love or hope of continuing.
Only a break in the tilting blinds
allows a razor's shard of light through
to the suffocating heaviness of the
room, slanting across the floor
to the feet of the man in his chair,
clutching the near-empty bottle.
The man he is now, a diminished shell
devoid of dreams and plans,
of sexuality and a passion for life,
can only long to be the man he was.

–

morning fog –
he sips a second coffee
to clear it

--

canyon trail –
my shadow falls
over the edge

--

winter moon
. . . the backlit shuffling
of thin clouds


.

Sadly, she was consumed, fated
long before I ever met her, soaked
to her precious core with cigarettes,
cheap wine and strong tranquilizers,
fighting the demons that clawed at her soul
whenever she tried living and loving
free of the chemicals.
Her demons I would never want to share,
although I was all too eager
to share her bed, share her days
without contributing what she needed,
and so she continued to drink
and laugh with that sad spirit the
laugh of the condemned, until
she finally drifted from life into death
and I hope, no, I pray into the peace
she had desperately sought while
confronting her living wasteland.

--

out of shadow —
an eagle's wing
touched by the sun

--

morning light
traces the frosted trees –
winter's brush

.

Tonight's full moon,
flush with its brilliance
for one night a month,
casts perfect shadows
from imperfect people.

--