You caught lightning in your mouth
and kissed the world a thunderstorm
All Four Winds bleeding out,
               moment by moment
and stilling the night;
instill it with silence.
Infuse it with waiting
                bait our breaths--

--The ocean's saline, and
               I'm surprised to say,
it seems to like us.
Lips can clamp or loosen,
catch and hold or unleash.
               Choose one?
          it's catch-and-release.

I gulped wondering into my mouth
and I spit out an omen.
               Dolmen smile fading now;
                    twin teeth releasing
                          floodwaters
               from this tomb door of a frown.
Quell the squalling night;
implanting our silence.
Infused with surrender.
               Hold no breath.

                         Anyway...

          We don't check on each other...

          ...or look at our neighbors.

           Yesterday's just that, friend.

Yellow roses sway
In the soft breeze
As a feather floats
Softly to the earth

Somewhere in heaven
My ancestor smiles-
whispers her deep longing
into the candle light

As summer falls into
The warm promise
of Autumn fires,
My heart is lulled into
Hibernation and the
Dream of being awakened
By the sweet kiss of spring

And then the rain comes down

A rebirth is here
Snow gives way into rivers
Flowing life anew

The winter feels so cold
Doesn't it?
Ice, cold barren ground
That even you can't walk through

The summer feels so hot
Doesn't it?
Hot, Suffocating air
That even you can't breathe through

The spring feels so nice
Doesn't it?
Is that when you'll disappear
Maybe you'll find something prettier
In the flowers

The Autumn feels so quiet,
Doesn't it?
Wet, drowning everything with storms
That even you can't sit through the rain

My love of the morning
my love dressed in dawn
My love early risen
and risen, so still
My love whom only
the noonday could ****

My love of an hour
my love in the dust
My love who only
does what she must
with a folded lily in folded hands
my love whom the afternoon reprimands

My love of the dusk
my love of the evening
My love barely listening
my love barely breathing
Who is my love whose love only leaves her
and lingers in shadows where no one receives her

My love of the night
who desires the moon
and the stars all gleaming
through tired trees leaning
My love of the earth, my love of the grave
my love of the sky, the blaze, the wave.

August now has dipped its head,
Blazing sun's cries now ahead.

September has tore reality,
An Asura sundering dun eternity.

The tide of Season's change again;
It undulates in trepidation.

as a child time seemed fake,
like a concept that i never understood fully
seasons came and went
as fast as the days did
time all meshed into
one
intertwined web.
that kept me stuck for years
until time stopped one day,
and my innocence faded with it
i now understood the seconds,
the hours,
the minutes,
i now understood why
why leaves wilted
why snow fell.
because we are in a cycle
everyday.
just another number
that's all i will ever be.

ephemeral laurels,
those lullabies of may,
became fungi while i was still asleep;
none preserved for the non-punctual
who dreamt of spring through spring–
another missed migration.

i walk along the ridge alone at noontime,
songbirds seemingly on strike against the straggler–
the prairie warblers so persistent in july
have gone, with august, silent,
nestled against the mountain walls
of cicadas’ seventeen-year symphonies,
those long encores–

i listen but do not hear.

i press my ear to the escarpment
and feel i’m missing something–
like ice ages are whirling still within the cool conglomerate
in spite of summer and sweaty palms,

like the passenger pigeons blurred
and smudged into oneness under the strata
have become,
without my knowing, the stratus clouds above–

or perhaps there is no spite in spindly evergreens
that flower for flowering’s sake;
that wilt to wilt;
that winter with or without listening.