Meadow Mediation


The wind weeps among the gabbling petals

striations of grief elongating stamens and bending stems

toward hollow ground 

scattering crimson and canary blossom tissue

scarlet sorrow bleeds

from the wingrush of vesper sparrows 

and fervent prayer 

Leaving below

a slop of rusks   -discarded hopes lie worm-rooted, spent.


City Scrawl


I drag solitude with me everywhere

like a toddler trailing a blanky, 

its fabric heavy with briars, seed husks 

and longing, 

drenched in pine must, leaf mud 

and wish

but draped over and around me

it lifts, lightens, breathes

like the mist of cirrus clouds

and becomes my hearth and haven


cradling within

tiny silences -

the pulse of pine sap and worm crawl

the wistful weep of nestlings

the warble of sunlight on water

and I find I am home blissful. 


“The Lights” Came the Summer We Were 13


They couldn’t be fireflies

-those flitting lovelights that kiss the dark

and perfume the air like sun-soaked grass-

but their yellow-globed flit and flicker

suggested winged critters.

soundless,

but buzzing in our blood like bee-hum,

they flickered in paired flashes -

two eyes blinking in coded dance

before our guileless gaze

bedazzling us with glitter and glimmer

of possibility

  of first kisses, candlelit wishes,

  of twilight dances and blushing romances 

  of railway passes and seafaring classes

we called them “The Lights,” unaware

they were the shimmer of 

stardust and wanderlust flickering our veins


Red Sky at Night

Evening flight

when sun-ripened wind holds its breath

and hawks lift their wings in praise

to spiral godward on thermals 

that steeple the sky with heat

And, dad, fleet of faultless joy

lifts off the grass runway to soar

with the gulls and swifts

in cirrus swirls of pink and crimson pilots’ delight.

Wrens of regret

that winged conflagration

of endless flickering and twittering 

that smothers silence

and strews disintegrating husks of memory


All that is Lost

Linger. 

Listen.

in the still of leaf weep,     

in the stir of the sap spill,

dryads sigh sotto voce 

elegy for the

rootless crownless

souls loosened from

dying trees.

untethered,

they seep into my sleep

vining tendrils of regret,

branches laden with longing

foresting my dreams

with the memory of us

sun drunk

with the quickening  tang of winesap. 


Forest Song


I hear the trees whispering again 

A shiver of sound 

giving voice to

greening 

answering

the thrum of rising sap

in my arteries.

wonder is nascent

filigreeing like capillaries

of willow branches

as they sing,

moth-winged and translucent 

tonguing the sough 0f the forest heartbeat


Communion



When sunlight

shines inward upon itself

banking its embers

and scattering a flicker of sparks

across the city 

burnishing 

cathedral spires

discarded hubcaps 

and garret windowglass,

moths arise,

untent their stealth wings

and breeze together 

in a fluttering hover of 

reverence 

to kiss the sun’s flame

with blushing proboscis

tasting the nectar of everlasting life.


Possession Denied or Reimagining John Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare

she succumbs to sleep,
her surrender supreme
flesh loose and fluid                                           
stripped bare by light too white,
her swan throat naked, gleaming, teasing 
in supplication to the incubus 
who surmounts her  
ugly and smug 

Maybe
this is not a tale of possession, but a vision of obsession, where

voyeurs of unrepentant greed slaver 
over images like this
of women held siege by the thrall of sleep,  
stretched out ripe and ready,
supple, pliable and nicely lithe.
visions of lustful need.a
Is this her nightmare or his dream?

Look again. Perhaps she lies in slumbrous ease 
robed and draped, impervious to need.
deeply sleeping, withholding virtues and gifts
of which the greedy can only dream
supine, yet unresigned.

Possession denied.
 

Family

They were verdant                                

with unapologetic life

a gabble of petals

tossing in an exuberance

of being, a whirlwind of growing

-of grass stains and skinned knees,

ironed dresses and morning messes

fireflies and mudpies-

Endlessly clamorously vining, trailing, flourishing and burgeoning 

Until they went silent,

leaving behind 

   

    -empty rooms fragrant

     with once mowed grass and overgrown memories. 

     a tangled treasure of lives and limbs

     forever vining and intertwining-

me.

Urban Perambulation

sidewalks stretch between Teslas and fir trees 

where paved-over roots expand and erupt, 

rippling moss-stippled cement into 

uneven hills and valleys


tiny earthquakes carve gnomish mountains 

out of pocked pavement

they wild the cityscape                                                   

where wee fissures appear,

slender as elf ears,

beneath stumbling feet

and unset the concrete mind

along crayoned faultlines   

to release rivulets, spritely streams, of spring-fed dreams 


Gone

You belong to memory like

tongues belong to peaches-

-rosy skin of ripened sun

distilling laughter

through baubles of juice

that drip to glaze your fingers

-saplings still-

refracting your ripening light

into glittering fragments cold and blinding diamonds. 

Finding Sanctuary in the British Standard Colour Chart

I hoard color names

-thimblefuls in sheen of Goblin green and Candyfloss, 

basketsful -Zephyr pale and straining,

Goosewing tins, teeming,

and thickets of sticky Cobweb sacks-

each bottomless as a she-dragon’s greed

to jewel my soul’s cradle.

they form necklace cliffs and 

bracelet streams 

of shimmer 

to please my Eddystone eye

and soften the gloom of sky

marbling my Tundra mood with ribbons of Daybreak.


In the Gloaming

Life and death kiss each other

a fibrous intimacy

stitched in our marrow

a bass vibrato serenading

the flora and fauna

of us.

So we love fiercely

briefly 

scattering our scent recklessly 

fireflies  lighting the path to one another.

Compass

 Lost between daylight and doom

I wander the crow-cleaved skies

their ink winging

rifts along my sightlines 

from inhale to exhale


I map the contours of their cacophony,

follow the blade of each wing

that splices the air 

a depthless shimmer

teasing my eye

a featherlike glimmer

of the breadth between prey and prayer


Solo Flight

Aloft, alone

with engine roar measuring my pulse, 

syncopating the whistle of wind to my breath.

Wide sky aerates my eye                                

and my worries are mapped below -         

a calligraphy of river wend                                    

glittering through the propeller’s arc

I pilot this curve of shadow and dapple

Between valleys and creases of

checkpoints plotted, 

parentheses inking rivers and roads.

I trace distances, plot minutes between before and after -

my prop parting the approaching clouds, 

my rudder dragging the dust of runways long gone

and I breathe, pendulous, light-headed, beneath canvas wings 

my compass swinging fore and aft, unsteady, uncertain.

Alone, held aloft by simple faith.


On the Wonder of Reaching 70


Old age

Tastes of memory,

-of snowflakes 

and Guiness -

frosty syrup softening 

December gray of hair 

and dreams

Warming waning bones.

Wrapped,

Tinseled,

Beribboned and bestrewn

In cloves and wistfulness

Wrinkling sated tongue with 

dusk’s sweet grief

A gleam on papery skin

-So thin-

that blood and breath

mingle in a singular sigh

So brief replete.


Winter song


Tiny Leaves, flit and flitter

spangling the sky with 

iridescent applause,

frost tinselling their jazz-hands.

A dainty calligraphy 

of delight,

despite 

winter’s piccolo glissade

where high-c gales

drift, like sifting leaves,

sliding down in measured cadence

until

bass notes muffle 

leaf-strewn ground

And icicles of light

Lift and lilt

in falsetto key,

clinging and singing 

between branches of

shredding trees

wind chimes of winter.

The Wrens of Regret

they come to us every day,

flitting and flapping, singing and winging

in constant endless streams of commotion

their numbers growing each morning

vexingly exponentially like the warning of

the algebraic certainty of the federal debt

they never rest 

their exclamation-point tails signaling 

squirrels, crows, hovering lovers

and a single rose blooming on a distant asteroid.

So here we stay

our what-ifs piling around our ears

with the insistent incessant persistent coming of the wrens of regret