DIFFERENCE

To think a thing is not enough to know it.

To call it by another name won’t make it new.

Syllables must sing circadian rhythms,

bodies must be danced daily into flesh,

only then will a dowry become an inheritance

and a diction sliver its way into difference.

SPECIES

If bees and butterflies can risk drinking 

from crocodile tears,

and wood warblers can chirp happily

in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone,

surely humans can sleep with the blinds open

and learn to apologize 
before they close their eyes.

THE MAKERS

How do you make a thing

as thin as trust?

Start with your own bone, breath and flesh.

Learn to love it.

…in due time, let it mingle

among the limbs and love

of another.

Then: dance it into the world,

plant it.

How deep?

Decide this together,

knowing,

the seed will be watching,

like the eye of Faith,

as you cover it with earth.

THE LEAF

Why did you pick this one up?

What caught your eye?

You tell me first.

What do you see?

I see a scorched, damaged thing,

wounded,

bleeding at the center.

You?

I see color: red, yellow, green and brown.

I see beauty.

I see life.

The leaf,

knowing better,

said nothing.

MEMORIALS

Between the impresario and the diva,

the vibrato and libretto,

In Living Color and the shadows in the cave.

Between elevators and air planes,

parrots and improvisations,                          

births and strokes.

Between drones and slurs,

stairs and wharves,

graffitied benches and tombstone epitaphs.

Between match sticks and wicks,

the silence and the listening,

goodbyes and hellos.

Between the vodka and the lime,

mustard and sardines,

the sleeplessness and the dreaming.

Between vacancies to choose from

and clutter to sift thru,

a day of intentions

and the lazy vines not finding their bean poles,

marches against Monsanto 

and remembering dead soldiers.

Between the Almond Roca

and anything else,

let’s not forget what the body already knows:         

love turns us into verbs.