I began to understand
My voice is best unheard .
For contempt of time
Brought unkempt grief.

A white padded scream,
Almost silent, rang down
The overhead streetlight and
Recalled my childhood

I caught myself listening and
Stifled a laugh.

In 79 those same buzz-lights
Distracted my quest for adventure
Under cold silver store racks -
Sensitive ears I guess.

Out of the hot sun
The shadows grow tall.
Sand and dust and quick to run
Laughing eyes - eight years young
Reaching out to kick the ball.
Excitement to pride
A sudden fall.
Whip-cracks and rocks sting
The ball bounces away
Lifeless like a rag doll
Bone chips and blood.
The shadows reach and
Touch new mud.

Every night you look like winter
Perfect moonlit landscape glow
To see you sweet relief I shiver
Like a child awaiting first snow.

Cloudless blue elastic river
Catching the morning sun
You give me strength without I quiver
Our life together just begun

Ancient myrrh in essence a sliver
Thought of captured light
Your open eyes deliver.

The bride and groom are positioned in the hall.
A father locks hands with the daughter
And remembers her birth.
Outside a jet streaks
Across the cloudless sky -
Leaving contrails.

This wedding gown weighted down
Like a train positioned
On a track;
Allows for easy movement in one direction -
Forward not back.

Toasts, familiar laughter, conversations
And the din of dessert forks searching
For the next bite will echo a lifetime
Like moments that flash
Into snapshots of memory.

Father, daughter, mother
Embrace on the landing in a moment
Of celebration and breath a sigh.
The conductor calls and checks his watch
As time will have his way.

Kneeling at your headstone
Where nature stopped mourning
The grass has grown tall here and
Your silence strong.
I know you’re free from the body
And the sins of our fathers
Chiseled on dry bones
But my flesh begs for your return
I dreamed you are sleeping
A polarized bad dream
Where I have to let go
But  I’ll just wake you now
I’ll give you my breath
To breath in
To open your eyes
I’ll give you my all
For the chance to stand near you
And shed tears of forgiveness
But I don’t want you to fall.
You will always be safe here
Safe in this song
May you live In this poem
As the shadows grow long.

I’m waiting for the day to come
The winds continued through the night
I want the cleansing soft rain and wild sun to
Soften sirens crowing tired travelers into light
From the aged hotels
Weighted down in feminine wonder
They groan, light a cigarette and look off
To the sea.
Overlooking the graffiti covered park benches
Placed like museum exhibits, like mahogany patched feral chickens pecking into the deep
Cement cracks.
The old poets are long gone from this paradise. They became the homeless - surviving and mumbling in the hidden coves
Of the banyan tree
She grows roots and chokes them to sleep.

I see you sitting on the back porch chair
Under the kitchen window
Where light crept and moved upon your hair  

The air is heavy and I cannot move -
The heavy limbed dream
I see you sitting on the back porch chair

My arms ache under the weight
The hermit thrush beak open is frozen too
Where light crept and moved upon your hair

No morning songs or alarms  for you
And the elm tree roots search the earth
I see you sitting on the back porch chair

And the weight of the air around me
Like an orb weavers web in morning dew
Where light crept and moved upon your hair

And the dragon fly spirals out
Of the heated upwards draft where
I see you sitting on the back porch chair
Where light crept and moved upon your hair

Wondering along the forest edge
Among the endless shadows
Of leaves shaking
I left the known trail into
A lower place
Stepping through dead brush
And tangled mounds of marigold
Red and copper patches,
Old witnesses stitched into a quilt
I found a stone chimney above a lost
Foundation like a worn grave stone.

The ruins called to me.
Pulled toward the lone marker
I sensed a change in the air
A cold sensation.
Without hesitation
I collected and broke branches
From nearby river birch
And built a fire.

I sat grounded in the heart
Of the Home.
Through the flicker and cracks
Of the flame, through the heated air
Breathing life into the flue
A voice from the house whispered.

The sorrows are gone.
I am what is left
A heart broken and alone.
This rooted foundation
Courting this ground
My home fell down
It’s rubble now
The earth reached up
And pulled it down.
The garden is gone.
I am what is left.

I watched the fire die
Out realizing loneliness is knowing
The spirits don’t have answers
They walk on ahead
In circles.

I realized I pushed too far
Inside nature
Stepping over icy boughs
Green needles frozen in time
My heart pounding
Exhausted of the cycle.
There are no birds circling above,
There are no words of comfort.
Just a quiet calm broken up
By the clicks and arthritic pops
Of heavy limbs and twisted gnarled
Fingers holding me in place.
I sit and smile at the crunching in the snow
Remembering the wonderful sound
My boots made trudging back home
For hot chocolate and warmth.

My soul is torn by a whirlwind
Screaming eddies scrape the truth away
Like a newborn
Flailing
Trying to take hold
Gasping and bleeding
Alone in a bed so cold.

What happened to what I dreamed
All the crisp and bitter leaves
Twisting in the fall sun
Flickering bright to dark
Like falling seeds
Flailing
Trying to take hold
On earth where silence
And colors seasonal and old
Bound me for a thousand years.

I fell apart when
You pulled away your hand
Now I’m sinking under darkness
In the room I made my stand
So I lull myself to sleep
Under waves that you command

I thought I heard you call out
Just a phantom and a sickness
All alone in the dark now
You know I cannot do this

I screamed so you could find me
I drifted out of reach
In the ocean I created
And my phantom on the beach

Now the room it’s cold and empty
Your songs are far away
The music that you left me
Are distant echoes I replay

I cannot sleep for in the street
A thousand mournful cries
The skies are red and carnage spread
Through a thousand lies

From mourning bells to fairy tales
A Criticism said
For city streets and summer heat
Torments whose left with dread

And clouds smother men as they roll in
A hard rain will come
Lightning strikes like the crack of live bones
And the hoarse words of Cain’s son

And I hear the cries of the
Children - the ones lost
In the dark

I know they want a future,
But I fear
They lost the spark