After all

Look.

Beauty,

she encircles you,

informs and

works through you.

Forgetting,

while wringing hands and fighting lonely tears,

that you are in relationship

with every stone you stumble on in chance meeting,

the dusty path that hugs your shoes,

the doves sweeping low overhead,

the desk that absorbs each press of your pen,

the books whose pages capture your breath,

the ceiling that gathers searching late-night stares,

the chipped cup,

its divot a place your tongue seeks,

socks he wore, but just the once,

a scarf she knit you, knowing full-well your love of the yarn,

and the animal responsible for it,

that patch on your shin that showed up, what, a decade ago now?,

let alone the scratch on the car that saved your life..

Forgetting builds a wasteland.

Come.

Sit.

Look around you.

We are, after all,

in this together.

For what it’s worth

Beneath skins and fur

I too rest in beauty

Let not a hand touch me

and still

I smile

For what it’s worth-

which, in a blink, may stack higher

than last year’s wages-

there is no fading value,

nor lost horizons

Forever always reaches towards us..

In a crisp pink angle of morning light

my heart is yours.

Turning the corner

Turning the corner,

two winds blow.

The old blasts my back,

picking up tacks and sharp-edged photographs 

along its path.

Those shes are afraid to let me go. 

Losing habits,

the groove-cut ways,

riles folks.

The wind in my face,

cold, fresh,

hasn’t yet warmed with the bodies of the unmet,

invites like a new swimming channel

whose water is clear, dark,

hugging smooth stone,

knowing well the course and direction

in which it takes me.

Turning the corner

dances my hair on end,

and has me falling forward

into invisible arms I must trust

to catch me.

Sunrise laughter

A sacred hunger grows

and tonight can’t possibly be the right time

to feed it,

but wine and the Hammond organ 

sure carve paths through

this wicked churchyard of a settlement.

Knock on my door in the morning,

my sight won’t be so cloudy

with delicious nostalgia,

and what sorrow erases clear vision

will lighten

with sunrise laughter.

A painting of night

While hands rest on sink edge
and skin drips above dirty bowls,
eyes see wall and window and trees in view
of an idea
who drops in,
pulls as much space
as a full day gathers snow,
and says,

Your wound is their wound is a wound
far-reaching with cold, gnarled underground fingers.
Hold the hand you fear,
befriend the dead. 
Bring here of the gifts
your people await release.
Possess the expanse
and embody the unspoken…

Hearing the music of you
in a flooding of my entirety,
more life rises in death
than even a painting of night
could dream.

Woven

Nocturnal orb weaver
has tucked herself away,,

Vulture, high in dead pine,

splays tail, fans wings wide, 

back to rising sun.

Soft voice and pedal steel round the room

while Crow wanders the rail,

head cocked, assessing what’s new.

Birdtalk through treetops-

woven richness of life

finding life.