I.
What has language wrought?
Ignorance has no language;
same cultivates same.

II.
Though, love is still love,
kind is still kind, red is red,
we still barter our daughters.

III.
But, we are above.
Let's hide in our forts of things
and claim we are better.

IV.
Such care poured into
the power of paper, lies,
progress, they say. Same is same.

Because even though
we aren’t as we
used to be
the truth
of the matter is
that I
always
want to be
with
You.
A friend told me
about how
dictionaries work;
about how
-when you look it up-
Life
comes before
Love.
And I realized
that maybe you knew
from the very beginning.”

A friend told me
that when life
ever gets me down
I should just remember
That Day.
No,
I’m talking about
a completely
different
day
now.
How did that song go again?
“I will always remember;
it was late afternoon.”
Wasn’t that
how it went?
To be right there
with You
on That Day
was more than I
could have ever
asked for.”

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
   —The Serenity Prayer

I. Heron

I was born arrow-straight, built for flying,
Three skipping stones past Otter Creek, hollow
Bones blanketed by slate gray, blue stones slight
And callused by well-worn prayers and shallow
Swells of minnows — subterranean aches —
And water cold on yellow scales, hardened
By the calamity of sunsets, lakes —
The drowning weight of too many pardons.
Dip low, tend this broken shoreline sweetly,
Spread shadowed wings and break honeyed silence.
Forgiveness take flight at dusk, discreetly
Written in psalms. Tepid soul find balance
Between the calm, a resting river space
This old trembling mind cannot displace.

II. Quetzal

After the storm, the chaos and quiet
Meet like dew poised on timid fingertips
And shallow grasses to quell the riot
Stirring inside. Fix fragments of this ship
Made of broken parts. My soul’s petrichor:
Inhale failure with a benediction
That fills tired lungs with bravery, before
Nature proposed expectations — fiction
Taut and mended by truth. The earth exhales
In breaths refreshed by rain, accompanied
By loudening trills and harmonious tales —
The tremor of circumstance, and the need
To continue existence like the weeds
That grow in sidewalks despite human greed.

III. The Pelican and the Gull

American Magicicadas choose
To surface seventeen years after birth
For the purpose of recreation. The Blue
Pelican cannot quietly unearth
The patterns of the tide without the gull,
But she does so with tireless trials
And the moon at her back — the lunar pull
Shaping stray shells for a little while.
Twenty-one years of tawny solitude
Shattered by innate desires, buried
Deep by stubborn aches, and kindly allude
To breathing for the first time. Weight carried
And lifted by rekindled hope, reaching
Sands like a button shell kissing the beach.

IV. Kingfisher

I pondered self-acceptance before diving
Into seas uncharted, with the patience
Of Tibetan monks softly harvesting
Grains of sand on an abandoned shore. Since
Emptiness is impermanence, we change
Like shifting seas suspended in nature,
Born from the crease of God’s hand — rearranged
Flaws bound by circumstance. Come close. Nurture
This silent heart into awakening.
Beyond these gray waters surges the sun,
Hopeful in the wake of a newfound spring,
Ochre and alizarin. We become —
Aware that no one saves us but ourselves,
With self-worth rising in tremendous swells.

I still love you.
I caught myself searching for those
lingering stares;
like your eyes don't want to leave.
You still glance at me too intensely
to be considered
just a figment of background
in each other's presence
but I still harbor every memory
in the shores of my mind,
always greeting my thoughts
when I don't want to swim too deep.

The silence
As she stands in the bathroom
With a bottle of pills
She blinks twice, three times
Then she gets the chills
She falls to the floor
With a marker in her hand
An hour goes by, two, then three
When there's a knock on the door
"Maria, please" her moms voice pleads
"There's someone here to see you"
"Maria?"
The door opens slowly
"There's a boy here to se-"
She stops mid-sentence as she watches a corpse
"Maria!"
"My baby"
Her mom looks up
A tear rolling down her cheek
"Jack it's you, it's always been you, too bad you couldn't see"
The writing enveloped the mirror
"Jack,come here please"
Jack walked thru the door
A note in his hand
"You have been number one, since day one. Maria I love you "
Maria
Too bad you couldn't see