Send Me

gradual blossom
quicken me
bring back bees
and beckon the birds —
we can emerge from winter
as a revolution

vert kiss

chrysalis green
wrapping our rebirth
in tenderness widened
towards spring –
these mossed prayers
turned to satin
on our lips

prayer

Northern Flicker
together in dreams
and trees –
swallow the distance
like folded hands

cold

getting caught
in winter rain –
January neither offers
nor requires
apology

choose again

dreams
and I left standing
in the door frame
of memory –
retreat or return?
Tell me, Dreamer
what say you?

hard end

mourning
toward deeper
life –

our last embrace
oak – maple – pine

on the way

counting
last needles
a pine will ever give –
together only
for a wisp
of time

altered

owl vespers
cutting night sleet –
I hear you
and nothing
is the same

hushed

Chickadees –
Love's voice awaiting
my silence

lighter

take me
to the mountain
let me kneel
in streams

what winter fractures
will become whole
what is heavy
will become light

I speak such things
from knowing hands
this dirt cries out
from treason

the horizon walks backwards
staring at my tears
parting with these words:
Heaven This Way

born again

moving
in our lover
we give birth
over and over
to the world's heart

ineffable

thrift shop scented
scarf unraveling
something in our deepest
red –
the Name of God

Linden

linden tree –
heart shaped leaves
incandescent against
our birthmark
of fear

bare

quietude
and love strips
us bare

like winter
branches forest-deep
tapping

essence
renewing
in solstice light

waiting
and not
waiting

thaw

snow
melting
to vespers –
love has winters
too

exposed

lost
under layers
of snowfall
intimacy and awe
our private weather
made into glass

tending

snow falls
shivers rise
in the dark –

this arid sleep
a territory I keep
for you

sleep songs

sleep tinted
with tomorrow-dreams

and moonlight hinting
at remorse –

this gathering
of crow feathers

these lyrics
on the way

down

soothed

riven
a holy hemlock –
winter austerity
tapered by nested
reds

on high

late afternoon
a crow-eye light –
up through the pines
clouds as a great church
peer down