A still pond
padded with lilies
dappled with netted sun
Cicada hum
My green rest
Please-
pocket the stone
and let it alone-
I’ll paint you
as someone sepia
and fleeting
by this bower’s dome
***
Image: Pixabay
Category Archives: free verse
Imagine that
What does it hurt
to give way to imaginings,
at least for a time?
To close all the doors and windows,
pull the drapes,
and make some hot tea.
To conjure some moors
and wuthering weather,
hear a rap tap tapping
at your chamber door,
and the neighing and stamping
of white horses.
No words
Looking back,
I think she was afraid
when I saw her truth.
We had never spoken,
but in the group sessions,
she surprised me
with split second glances
and strange blushes.
Then, tables turned,
I made a game
of trying to catch her eye.
Not a single word.
That’s how it goes.
…and then one night, as I walked under a streetlight in the fluttering snow, she pulled up to the stop sign in a pickup truck. Rolled down the window. Smiled and waved. I waved back, though I didn’t know who it was, or how the heck anyone would have recognized me in a winter parka. Next morning, I waited in line for a coffee at the drive-thru. As I pulled up to the window, there she was, with her half smile and eyes averted. I broke the ice and said “I know you. You drive a black Ford pickup, right?” Again, a blush. “Thanks for your order, Sir.”
Here is a Book of Faces
of a nobler sort.
Each one (that can be seen),
beautiful in some way.
If we but read between the lines,
we can divine their colours.
So many are umbral now,
I fear.
But I am fatalistic, cynical.
I hope I am wrong,
when I cry
for the ones who smile.
Puppers
We were nine.
I believed everything you said.
Touching a toad gave you warts.
Step on a crack,
you break your mother’s back.
Kill a spider and it rains.
We made grasshoppers spit tobacco,
knew the divinity
of buttercups, daisies,
and dandelion chains.
Such puppies in love.
On my way
In a while,
maybe,
I will not know you.
Don’t cry or be afraid
when you do not know me.
There’s a short story
yet to be told,
and it begins its writing
with a halting hand.
Even as I stand over a tiled drain,
I make the water hotter.
That spinal rush.
That warming touch.
A hand taken
Trickle-down drops
and slowed lightning
speak to me of pathways.
Oh, I know
that practice makes perfect.
Must I learn, once again,
what was glossed over
too quickly?
Numbers and Deuteronomy
taught me that details
are not bedeviled.
Now, I pay attention
without training wheels.
Adamless Eve
Dearest Eve-
When you are born,
may you grow
in sacrificial love.
May you bathe
in the galloping days,
take the hand of many,
and rejoice in that which is given.
When you teach,
we will follow,
laying aside all that is false.
This is your time.
We will be ready.
The oddness
Could it be a tangle of ganglia
that makes me think odd things
and care about devil’s details?
You see a tree, a rock, a brick.
I think of searching roots,
the alchemy of an acorn,
compactions of crystals
from Earth’s hot breath,
and cuboid ovens cooking in colours.
A moment more
I want to hear a snatch
of all the songs ever sung.
The gong of all the bells ever rung.
I want to see, smell, taste
the flowing rains
that have spattered
on the canvas tops of wagons
and the oaken decks of rolling ships.
Please give me but a while longer
before we lay our last.
Aremyfeetofftheground 