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.

 

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.