Stalked

She stalked me around the library like a skittish cat,

Twitchy, wary, full of hiss and spit.

Sitting fat, all tucked-up in her chair, 

ears pricked, her eyes cool slits of suspicion        

Watching, waiting, perched.

She’d slink behind me in the stacks

soft-pawed, stealthy, silent.

I’d imagine her fishy breath on my neck

when I stooped to shelve a book, or sat to read a review

My every movement consumed her, 

teased her like a flicker of laser on the wall,

a slippery shadow that looms and fades.

Irresistible prey.

She finally gathered herself up one day,

squared her old-lady haunches,

arched her bony back, 

and pounced.

But I was vapor in her claws, She may embody cat, but I am nothing like a mouse.

Student Pilot Accidentally at the Controls of an Aged Convair 440

The tarmac swam beneath us, cold river black 

deepening to onyx as we rose, wobbly-winged, into night

I sat left seat fingertipping the controls, 

Certain of heading and altitude, 

uncertain of the physics of romance

reckless finesse

heart dangling on the struts 

sanity wing-walking above

tethered only by my untamed veins 

and airworthiness of the pilot’s  

chiseled cheekbones and charm

perfuming the cockpit as he dozes

heedless of how I’d flung my vulnerability onto the runway now receding into darkness.

Cartography of Old skin

calligraphy of bird tracks

thin as splinters

highlighting

storied striations of worm burrows 

while

long-legged

blue tributaries of veins

wind unmapped 

beneath freckled rust of mole hills

persistent itch of memory etched between the knees

Faith

There is a Sunday silence

among these ancient trees.

Just a vesper of leaves, 

blessing the evening mist  

and a whisper of bat wings unfurling

in lancet cathedrals of flight

Rising ever upward

silent, certain,

resplendent in a 

glory of purpose

while below

twilit branches hold steady in the dying light. 

Under the Aching Sky

The siren call of drowsing

persists 

- this tangle of  afternoon light

lazing over creeksong and birdbabble, 

sliding down moss-spangled banks

into the burble and giggle and leaf must

an iridescence

evoking lisping rhymes and whispered secrets-

subvocal

lulling limb and ligament into reverie

dreaming memory

Breathing Together on our Balcony

Coffee steam curls -

white wisps of

cirrus clouds circling our heads

our steeple-high evergreen twins 

     Genevieve and Josephine 

lean gracefully toward us

branches bowing and curtseying,

limber ballerinas spilling

their freshening breath 

fragrant and green

 

as the memory of spring 

to mingle soothingly

with the soft huff and hum

of the

lingering ease

flowing between us

our little sanctuary

Undulation

the sea’s womb 

cradles 

us

parched and  

girdled 

in faltering pulse of grief

its saltwater lullaby the woosh and suck of breathing

onomatopoeia

of survival

in exquisite soporific echo

A Cloud of Bushtits

they flutter down in a single

     slip of sky

 a flurry of wing-flit and feathers                               

 crocheting the clover with wispy ribbons 

    of light

streamers 

   of lilt 

festooning lawn

for one sweet moment at dawn

suddenly  they lift in a single scatter  of wing-toss trilling behind the gift  of song

Swallow Symphony

Swallows take flight

wingtips pitched on the precipice of lift 

only a fringe of feather, a warble of wing

to defy gravity

wings curved to lasso the wind

tail rudders daintily a-flutter

they become the seamstress of the sky 

looping swooping curving and capering 

tiny maestros of roll and yaw, pitch and lift

they effortlessly stitch heaven to earth  with endless exquisite precision

Interlude

Winter slips softly here,

spilling into

stippled lakes of slate.

Mists feathering

wren wings

that weep into

puddles of muddling leaves.

City sounds sleep 

swaddled in sonorous

susurrus of

Rain, rain, slinging rain

The sifting silence of rosy dusk

suspends

startled by

staccato crow clamor 

While dawn blooms  softly  wetly  sweetly  gray.

Hovering Briefly on the Wings of Glory

a ragged fury of wind 

shreds the last vestige of

daylight 

summoning

the pall of winter night 

calling forth crows to cloak

the sky  

with wings draped in mourning crape

dense and desiccated

as smokers’ lungs

they suck the

last sip of light

bleeding the day dry

empty 

as despair

until

a whisper, 

soft as paper-winged moths 

quickens the air

a supple heartbeat of light

emerging 

lobed and limbed 

growing plump and rosy 

dawn’s cherub-cheeked warmth

blooms on hunched shoulders

hearts flower

full.

briefly wonder is nascent.

Stormwatch

The sky is dense with it -

this massive fleet of clouds

looming like

ghostly freighters in full sail 

before a sluggish wind.

Even the sun 

hangs listless -

half-lit, 

tilting toward nothing but 

eddies of endless 

rinse-water gray

The air is swollen with it - this consecrated lust  of smothered susurration

the roil and tumble and salt water spew

swallowed

saturated in  spitting torrents of ceaseless silence.

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