in all the cities
we should have met
trails and lakes
coffee shops and bonfires
the trees go blind in disbelief
over how we've used distance
as our voice

Midnight Mass

in night's backyard
beyond garden and gazebo
a little high
but not wayward
she falls asleep
under Ursa's eye
knowing the way
yet a little
lonely

cardinals
riding dawn's spine –
this firebolt
a homesick arrow
in the heart

morning light
like milk
forfeiting night's
more charitable
gown

milkweed
ghosts and forests
letting loose their harvest –
what I give away
what I hold

east light
my aperture lucida –
tell me October shadows
are daunted, trembling
on your threshold

dawn's cardinal blush
and his melodic opinions
saying heaven's door is a tree
rooted in the ordained soil
of our death

late summer sumac
beginning to blaze
and these freckled shoulders
carrying the weight
of this long parting

butterfly footprints
in August dust –
charting this light
to my Lover's
gaze

eternal river
flowing from my breast
swim to freedom
beyond borderless
clouds and banks

following
orange trails
of Monarch prayers –
do you recall
this Love?

aliveness
this movement
of desire

without a story
or teller
still this

together
investigating chicory
and lace –
to make sense
or tell the truth

pines
tickle the sky
your weightless shadow
an arrow –
elongate in me

Woodie Guthrie verse
like smoke rising
free of the fires
starting it
all

silence
of mountain tops
casting spells of stars
making love
on every summit

Kumbuka Kenya

missing
acacia perfume
on the Mara's exhale

simple language
of wild calla lilies
vespers

roadside corn
roasted with lime
smoke in my eyes –

my lovesick lips
remembering our red earth
rising from the rift

in the breast
of Earth
I am buried

flowers wilting
towards an old
name

yellow leaf moon
a rising fevered dream
of you

my bosom large
and hard even in death
a prayer still on my lips

white pines
leaning against
my destiny

this cathedral
in the clearing

this barren shell
of a home

lying
in the wake of pines
wanting

what teems in you
poem and prayer
shaking

what is restless
and bookish
waiting

the jump