How can you remain
so starlike,
even through this sorry strife?
You show here each day,
and give things away.
A funny word,
a pun or two,
a walk with you,
a curious view.
Lightheart I call you,
but know that I see
that your cup
no longer runneth over.
Would that I could fill it.
Category Archives: relationships
No regrets
I would tell
what percolates within me,
but it’s not grand enough
for a pauper’s poem.
The thing that rises from the breast,
reddening the ears
and brewing these tears.
But I stay shut,
and quit of speech.
Held in the sway of regret,
but warmed by your aureole.
It is enough.
We interrupt our broadcast
We are sorry, Earth,
for the interruption.
I’m sure we’ll be back at it soon.
You won’t even miss us.
Meanwhile, have a rest.
You deserve it.
Teach the roots and shoots and buds
a new season.
Give them lemony dreams
of a humming summer.
Simpleness we will need.
How to love you.
The weaker sex
We come to you.
Some, in lifelong love.
Others, in fickle infatuation.
More, in savage force-
As bestial as the barnyard
or the jungle.
Assuaged until the next rut.
Unable to accept
a blame deserved,
an ego bruised,
instead becoming
the destroyer of worlds.
Who, then, is weaker?
Just listen
Childlike,
I imagine that sound never decays.
That I could put the needle on the record,
and listen to whistles
that can’t come anymore.
That we could hear childlike things
we once said to each other,
but have forgotten to write down.
Cry for this deafness and dumbness,
at last.
Butterfly
When you look at me,
sometimes it’s very odd.
I feel as if you are seeing something
that I don’t yet know.
Figuring the future.
Got it down pat.
But I don’t want to know,
unless you show me.
When I look at you,
I wish your flurry of flights would end.
Stay. We’ll share stories.
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.
Aremyfeetofftheground 