THE PRISM

The wolf in us 

wants dissonance dead.

If we listen

our Cain will kill it.

Patterns – made or found

 – are essential then.

They offer us

relief.

Without them

ambiguity, incongruity

invite distrust,

terror.

So we strive

to stitch, to bind.

Give names 

to the nameless.

Aim to resolve. 

Understand.

Fasten ligament to bone.

Tissue to tissue.

Create coherence

wherever we can.

When we do,

the riddle unravels.

The safe cracks open.

The punch line pops.

The metaphor sings its

troubadour song.

And we seem ingenious to ourselves.

And that is all we really want:

To find a prism bending light

inside a cave.

AN ARCHITECTURE

A chasm       

and the desire to cross it.

A bridge and the will to build it.

Girders and trusses.

Rivets and bolts.

All this and more

make an arc of intention.

Imagine the river, also.

But don’t underestimate it.

It is like a snake.
It rises and strikes.

Its roiling waters rage and flood -

and, if fierce enough,

can nullify

any architecture,

wreck any engineer’s 
well-intentioned dream.

WANNA

Wanna make-believe and

turn ourselves to smoke,

be blizzards in May,

or umber rasping in the autumn air?

Wanna cut out all the crosstalk

by letting our bodies parley the palaver?

How ‘bout we quarantine the truth

and flummox our way through the in-betweens?

Wanna double-dip our hard-won wisdom 
in the deep-end

and cull from our catastrophes splendor

like fleas from chickadees?

I’ll take you to a skinny place, if you insist,

where all is snug and close.

And from there we can make our getaway

by taking water to a cactus,

by returning nests to tempest trees.

But understand: 
there are no strings levitating this lyric.

And I ain’t no lyre, neither.

More like a chisel, a chipping,

and a slave inside its marble.

MURDER

Crow does not wish it were Kingfisher.

Or for feathers red instead of black.

Never will it sing like a Wood Thrush.

Nor does it care to.

But we do: care.

Caring is our curse.

Like a cawing in the mind,

the desire to be different,

to be other than who we really are,

haunts us like a Shadow we peck at,

until the shade wakes 
and eats us. Only then

the self, that wants us dead,

finally dies.

PASSENGERS

Train doors open, and a large grey moth appears.

From inside, outside, from the tracks or the chill air?

Not known.

Just the serendipity of doors and wings.

And this thing,

the size of a child’s hand,

now alighting on a denim dress.

And now, this woman, faced with a choice:

waiting train or open window?

To free a thing or to take it with her?