Spring threatens to melt into us.
Summer follows soon enough.
Birds will return, seeking seeds and worms,
Building nests for the young to come.
Will the birds remember the songs they sing?
Songs of summer, songs to mate?
Flowers will emerge, warming their petals
And leaves under a brilliant sun.
Will they remember how to open
Their blossoms?
Will they remember how to dress themselves
In glorious color?
How can the birds or flowers remember
When the world walks a tightrope
Over the abyss
And sunflowers may never grow again
Tall enough to bow their heavy heads to God?
I wait for spring—
When days run long,
While hope emerges
Green from the earth
Warmed by a sun
Who knows the spell
A gentle warmth brings
With a smoothness of breath
Taken in the calmness of colors
Basking in the light of a day
Nourished by winter’s ashes.
Pieces of her broke in the waves,
Searching for wildness
In this place she always went to be alone.
She walked along this shore a thousand times
In the dawn and the dusk
As if they were quantities unknown,
And thus, in them, she could discover some truth,
Some faith, some charity, some hope for herself.
Who knew? It had worked before.
She’d walk toward the town with something—
Some small bit piece replenished.
Besides–
She’d always heard salt was healing,
So she figured she’d rub it in her wounds.
But bloody red and raw
She walks still wounded, broken,
Along the wildness,
Yet not touching it.
Freedom elusive.
She can not find what she lost.
Her wounds chains,
Binding her still
To things she knew illusions.
She waits for the friction of salt
To rub away the chains.
She walks toward the seals in the surf
And on toward the whales in the deep,
Searching for truth or faith or charity
In the wildness of the sea.
I wanted to run among the wild ones.
Live with them among the mountains.
Rub muzzle against muzzle.
Eat sweet grasses.
Enjoy golden warmth upon my back.
Let my soul and spirit rest
Among the trees with the wild ones.
But it was not to be.
My heart could not slow enough
To contain their peace.
And so, I sought the white ones at the sea.
They crashed about restlessly.
Truly wild they were, as they raced continually.
Their cacophonous pacing furious, relentless.
Yes, these wild white stormy ones were in keeping
With my heart, a raging irregular and brutal pace.
The science of flight
Broken, stripped down
Into the realism of words.
The dryness of what happens:
Lift and torque,
Drag and propulsion—
All things the ancients
Dreamed of mastering.
And so, we moderns have:
The smallest of Cessna,
The most enormous Airbuses,
The cavernous military transports,
Such technology and science
To destroy the magic.
Until watering the garden
On a summer evening
And turning to see
A tiny green hummingbird
Stick out his chest in pride
At having mastered
Standing still
While flying.
Through wisps of thin streaming clouds, The last full moon of the decade Looked down on me and seemed to nod. Why? I’m not sure. I thought and tried to puzzle it out. The decade? Perhaps. Did this last full moon wish me To think about this decade?
What ten years can bring: A wife battling ovarian cancer For her life and loosing; Loosing myself along the way And finding me and loosing me All over again; A profession left in disgust For the pleasure of retirement; A daughter nearly lost and then regained. Talk about water swirling slowly down the drain. But it swirls no longer. The ground leveled. The tub fills. I have finally grown into my skin.
I look to the moon again and she seems to nod Once more. From somewhere, I smell a faint Scent of narcissus. Yes, it would be easy. Play the fool once more and return to that place, find beauty and comfort In blue skies And soft grasses by mountain lake, Breathing in the sweet narcissus scent, Pretending for a little while That everything offered was true. But brimstone to my soul would it be. Leave the blue skies, the soft grasses, the mountain lake, The scent of narcissus behind. This I must do or my soul I would lose.
At sunrise over water, Remembering a dream Of finding ecstasy Within tears, Things neither given Nor felt in years, Linked by all the fears To form decades of a life Lived like a stranger In my own skin.
I have stood Since the dawn At this ocean’s edge Waiting, waiting. And now at noon The rain begins. Fierce pelting blows Washing me clean Of all I know Or dare to dream.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 