January 1, 2012

Begin again
In this interminable gray,
The only color left
On the palette.

The color of my mind defeats it,
Dabbing and swirling
Blues and greens and reds.
And so on.

I will never relinquish the fire crackling at my core.
My 47-year-old self seeks out
The boy within — bright-eyed, yearning,
Brimming with hope.

He has endured the years,
Breathing here in the present.
The clock keeps ticking, but my time
Moves to the measure of my heart.

After the Harvest

In spring, buried seeds sprout

in time to grow and bear

fruit and flower.

Arc of light widens horizons as

earth weaves its tapestry of days

and nights around our star.

Light rises ever higher

till all is crescendo, abundant, wild,

and somehow overgrown.

In time, sun and light

fade to seek another angle.

Decay sets in with surety.

Seed husks and weed-clotted soil

dry to be gathered.

It will rise in time

but it must die 

to silt in,
adding to life.

Darkness and cold come, and

the days lack the warming promise 

of spring’s sun-kissed cool.

Back then we knew it 

illuminated the path ahead.

We may return in time again

but not before we discard and

welcome the decay to cultivate

renewed soil from the harvest.

The Seeds of Grievance

Bitter seeds appear in the spring soil:

The askew look, the late arrival,

Or the icy response to a question.

You allow them to germinate.

Ignored, they yield more seeds
That scatter in the the wind.

Days, weeks, years pile up.

Kids, dogs, bills, jobs, car repairs,

Bathroom renovations silt in.

The weeds keep taking root,

Birds come, eat the seeds, fly away,

Shit them out around the yard.

Soon, weeds poke up everywhere,

Choking the flower beds,

Denying their inherent elegance.

No need to pull and cultivate.

You have too much pride and hurt

To do that — until one day everywhere

Flourish weeds, weeds, weeds!

And the flower beds vanish, memories

Lost under Time’s soil, forever.

This Poem Sucks

I know, I know,

The title gives it away,

But I felt like writing it anyway.

It is just that I like to type sometimes

And forget about the internal rhymes,

Or the meaning of the words,

Or the futile stabs at the ineffable.

Forget about all that,

And just let me write

A poem that sucks.

Let me simply add adverbs

And adjectives willy-nilly,

And abandon the grounded nouns

And verbs with verve that vivify.

It's hot outside. It's summertime.

Let it suck, and suck badly, and let me

Cop out and see what happens.

Let me lower my standards,

Not that I had any to begin with.

Blah, blah, blah.

This poem really, really sucks.

And here’s the three-line kicker 

(which in and of itself also sucks):

I enjoyed writing this poem.

Dead Brother in a Dream

You visited me again last night

In a dream — still suffering and dying,
But not yet gone, the way it always feels.

You told me how Jesus himself

Had pressed his body to your
Chest and whispered in you ear:

“Kindness, love, and understanding are

The highest forms of human consciousness.”

I knew precisely what you meant.

When I reached out to hug you,

It was like air grasping at air: You were there

And you were gone, the way it always feels.

Isle to Isle

The best of us comes in the morning:

Fresh and awake, everything new,

Blessed, we head into the day.

Sun and coffee. God, give us a kiss.

Turn the wheel one more time,

Make plans, and hope for the best.

Three deer stand in the meadow below.

Dew clings to their hooves and tails flit.

They scatter at the first negative charge.

I have not spent much time in this part

Of myself, buried under so much rubble,

Beneath tumbled skyscrapers, silting in.

We head to an island, beyond ourselves,

And yet somehow our own. The painted

Green of mind and spirit mimics the trees.

I cannot count the times and passages,

Dreamt up in some bigger dream itself,

Out of earlier selves and people now gone.

Evergreen mind, come back to us in 

The eternal, tumbling, June evening air.

Fill my brimming heart about to break.

Riverhearts

I see it as a river,

flowing to the sea.

Eddies and currents whorl,

Easing us along our way.

Stir in the tawny, the green,
The birdsong and salt air,

Twirl the whirlpools to reveal
 Unexpected magnitudes below.

If I know just one thing it is this:
The river moves and rises in me.

These colors and feelings
Swirl in my world.

Join me on the river,

alongside me, in its flow.

Let it carry us until one day 

We will kiss and embrace the sea.

Dark Below, Light Above

I
We race through cloud-enshrouded streets,
Caught at stop lights, ensnared by ticking clocks,
Rushed evening meals, and late arrivals.
He eats alone, sour sustenance, the family no more.
The rains. Days of rain. Weeks of rain.
Endless drops from clouds, soaking, unabsorbed,
Muddying the waters, sending rivulets through the garden,
Sweeping away last autumn's dead flowers
Down the driveway into the gaps of the waffle-covered
Storm drain that spills into the sea,
To be eaten by a crab who discards a starfish
And then is consumed by a seagull
When the waves draw back.

II
We know it exists above that gray ceiling,
Intuitively know, if we look but do not think:
An eternal sunny day without horizon,
As important in the loftiness of air as within
The soft, subtle chambers of our tender hearts.
Let the blue find its ways into its darker regions
To unburden us, unchain us.
What could matter more?
We should feel that it shines always up there,
Even on this dark day, an enduring and enchanting blue.
And yet we get caught up in the mind's indifference,
The incessant back and forth, the ups and downs,
Missing the moment when the sun splays the clouds.

Black on White

This is why I like to write:

These perfect forms of black on white,

As they rollick atop as if on air

On clouds of paper, free and fair.

I test the waters with something true

Like robin’s-egg blue,

Or ocean surf,

Or anything I can name 
From my own home turf.

My words venture forth in a stumble,

While I seek the speech of my self’s own mumble.

I greet the night as I greet the day,

With words shaped from thoughts like clay.

Letters spill forth, as I type to keep pace

With inner visions seeking outer space.

Just black symbols formed amid white gaps —

Nothing is final and nothing lasts.

Moonrise

Come back to us.

Return with your sun-reflected orange light,

A zig-zag stagger squiggling in the swirl of the sea.

You are evidence of darker, lifeless bodies out there.

You bear the scars of meteor-mad millennia.

You bring tides to shore and us to us.

You tug at our eyes.

Unveil them.

Captured in your pull,

We have nowhere to go, and neither do you.

You sit enthroned in fevered

Light tonight, a part of us broken off, aloft.

Hang in balance, old one, lifeless one.

Turn in darkness and give back light,

Even if you will never

glow alone.

August 10 (for Glenn)

A blue sky decorated

With a frosting of cloud — 

And you are not here.

The candles of the sun

93 million miles away

Warms my skin —

And you do not sit beside me.

The rivers of wind

Give voice to the trees —

And you speak only in

The stillness between breaths.

There will be no celebration today,

No cake with 50 candles,

No songs to be sung,

No sweetness of laughter on the tongue —

Only the morsels of memory

Remain to sustain us.

A New Life

You could wake up to anything.

That is the fear.

The family splintered,

The bad cell gone haywire,

The wrong turn into the tree.

You can withstand these unknowns because

You are human, and you hope.

You bring this to the game:

Your fortitude and your heart.

You now see there is only love,
Built up behind your eyes,

A truth known to your innermost self.

You have nothing else,
Because you are poor,

But the heart brings you wealth.

You cannot turn back the clock.

You can only tick with the time,

And dream of better days ahead.