open
but ashen
to the tilt

house-shadows
stay all day

and I ask

does love know
this death?

unopened
blooms and letters
summer's memory
vased

the way
the unopened bloom
alters winter

east keeper
pushing light

a bridge to cross
anchor and wave

I don't belong
to anyone, you see

numb
in complacency

adultery
an antidote
to death

at the level
of rivulets

a stone
before temple doors –

I hear
my own
echo

trees groan
like an old ship
and sunlight slants
through the lessening –
all day long I wait

trees begin
drawing strength
for winter –

survival of the fittest
or theft?

my rib cage aches
along the sides

embers burn and cool
in the low hanging night –
first fireflies

water

muttering

unto the horizon

a stammering journey

netted in concert

the story

of us

February floods –
a red-winged blackbird
so soon

a pine cone
in the old barn
jacket –

the inner guru
always ready

winter pines
in an ancient state –

we outgrow
our dreams

and in January
are free

snowmelt / staining the white pine / all the way / down

Morning

colobus monkeys crying
in bamboo stands
outside my window
every morning
I remember

thick woodsmoke
carrying sunrise
and the song of tea pickers
passing the day
bent

and I remember
the absolution of sins
bleeding from my knuckles
in the wash basin
of midmorning

boiled chai
and sukuma wiki
“to push the week”
and I remember
we always did

The Wettest Yet

It's raining but the dog won't come in.

All morning a sobbing sky

leaving no room for imagination.

His naked hands in November, like that, but colder

just before the heat.

That's how it is losing a heart

to the highway – like the sun sinking in half

degrees or like eating the moon

down to the rind. East is the story I make believe

in the middle of a Michigan night

with broken blinds, either always drawn or always exposed.

Oh my northern lights!

My bleeding sand dune screams and whispery pine songs!

The boats are empty now

the shores without moors.

Seiche rising.

I remember when the sun warmed my clothes

hot shirt against sweating skin

Will it rain for 40 days? The wettest yet; the impossible get.

Is it not you

looking for something to burn?

A jonquil sunrise

and ghosts of quatrain lines

pouring whiskey into the wishing well.

Is this a tango or a waltz?

Wallflowers the size of broken hearts. I saw

fingerprints on her guitar in the 23rd Psalm bar light.

Lay me down, good shepherd. Wrap me

in the lashes of a willow. Build the ark.

Sail to Nineveh.

Just do something before we drown.

milkweed fluff
and a bald eagle scraping
the pines –
how the open road says
make a wish

sawdust moon –
a strangled light
over impoverished fields
whispering behind
my back

Bookended

crumpled up

bed blankets of time

stretched out as hours

bookended

by dawn or dusk or black sky sleep

I cannot be the monk

his face disappearing

unscathed

because it is all terminal

yet dilution hems the want

with the expectations of others and the honor

of perception

which god demands this night-scape?

in the hills purple and dusty blue

pines grow together over cinnamon

and cones

and armless spindles forcing the eye

upward for an anchor

the swish of floating whispers speak

volumes of everything we haven't said

aloud

autumn and I would talk all night

blotting the dream path

unaware of the moon perhaps

that is what aloneness is for

door-framed thresholds –
the smell of fog
and summer's quick kiss
goodbye

Ready Not Ready

in the room of glass
next to the open window
I listen to raindrops
falling from September's oak
and draw maps of summer
on paper airplanes
to keep in the drawer safe
from harvest winds