ARMS

 

The light

spread across

 

the branches.

The tree

 

beamed with

a kind of

 

delight, a look

that seemed

 

to say

to the sun:

 

I am

all arms, yet

 

you cradle me

in yours,

 

in your

invisible array.

 

What did I do

to deserve

 

such a warm

and loving embrace?

ACROSS AND THROUGH

A grey line

across

a grey sky.

A needle

through a stack of storm clouds.

A gull in flight.

 

 

BRANCHES

 

A crowded nest in a bare tree.

A smile in the mind. 

 

The image of either:

buoyant joy.

 

ADMIRATION

 

We park by the lagoon to eat 

the lunch she had made us.

We crack the lids of our containers

and admire her handiwork in the glassware:

quinoa, tofu, and a mouthwatering array

of diced peppers. Reds, yellows, and oranges.

We look up: the windshield

(more glassware) is rain-drenched.

Our admiration obscured the sudden downpour.

The distant hillside, a swatch of light.

The raincloud, a passage overhead.

Hurry, she says, throwing the car door open,

on her feet, heading toward the water,

any second now we should see it.

Just then: a rainbow.

 

***

 

A day later 

we round the same lagoon

on our way further north.

Look, I say, how the water is so blue and yet

closer in it is aquamarine.

Sunshine, she says. Sunshine.

Just then: a rainbow. 

I am a prism, warmed

and lit by her light.

THE TURNING

 

1.

It wants to rise

and be thrown

into form from formlessness,

from gesture into gesture.

To be a spinning that turns

clay into bowl,

a shape that holds a hollow.

In its presence is my presence,

my fingerprint, my pulse.

 

2.

When I can’t find the words

I turn to figures of speech

like a potter to clay,

to help me shape the thing

I can’t say on my own.

And for that I am grateful

for the turning.

For the turn of a phrase.