NEST

 

a stricken 

gesture 

 

a nest, barren

poised and yet stalled

 

to take flight

it birds            seedlings

 

never ripe

enough to hatch

music           maracas

stilled in the wind

 

against a panoply of color

bursting with season

 

a tree, a reminder:

leave the nest

 

make life from life

fear paralyzes

freedom is

what flies

 

 

 

THE CANOE

 

I don’t want my soul

to be a rumor,

 

a hole in a canoe

I bail

 

while thinking it is

somehow separate from

 

the tapering shape,

the ribbed belly,

 

from the canoe itself.

I want the rowing

 

and the bailing to be

twin actions.

 

I want the gliding through shallows

and shadows,

 

through eddies,

toward damns,

 

to come from frugal strokes,

from oars limned and dripping

 

with honeyed-light. 

I want my soul to leak

 

its grief into life.

I want my living 

 

to be the cradle 

that carries me

 

down the river

bending, always bending

 

toward the sound, toward the sound

of the not-so-distant falls.

THE KISS

 

Now and then

moments occur

 

when we see

ourselves…

 

as the raw

beauty

 

the love &

forgiveness

 

(a stolen kiss

between bud

 

and blossom)

we actually are.

 

 

 

 

THE WINDOW

 

A winter tree

at day’s end.

Its barren

brushstroke

branches

are the window

through which I see

crows murder and trace

their stippled ink

across the gloaming.