Crumbs of the crust

After centuries at rest, boulders fall
in seconds or minutes, crushing
all the Earth and her inhabitants
in one violent descent—and then
at the bottom of the valley, where
streams will find a path and trickle past,
the brief rampage moment will end
without even a shiver, just to land,
there to rest for centuries again.

November 2019

The last defiance

One last red tree cuts like a wound
across the grays of a chilly afternoon;
her beauty, here, a brash defiance
against what begrudges this bright smear,
this last flash of passion’s flames.
Why does she try, it sneers: when she
will be stripped, like all the rest—
in deep winter all the sticks are bare
and only memory of what was, exists.
Suddenly the scene and focus shift:
I recall those people I used to know,
whose hearts are strangers to me now.
Their beauty, now stripped of context
remains a bright brash defiance smeared
where only dim memory of what was, exists.

November 2019

The home

He’ll clean his house for years
watching worlds pass by outside:
sidewalk novels, street romances
an endless cast portrayed—
shifting sands, new dunes each day.
And still the house keeps clean.
The sands pass through, of course,
cross his threshold and back out;
he wipes their dust off of his chairs
and vacuums them from shining floors—
it is not for them he cleans, rather
it is their trace he wipes away.
On cloudy days, sometimes he wonders
for whom he daily labors; yet
somewhere secret in his chest
he knows already that moment;
sees it nobly announce itself
with smiling eyes, to say—
“How beautiful it is here,
how loved I feel, to enter,”
to his reply: “Yes, welcome home!”

November 2019

Sing

Sing to me, my light-shot life
in verses tell of paradise
whether seen today, or when
my timid time comes to its end:
whether hunted, loved, forgot;
through rain and cold and fog—
sing! And I will carry deep within
your declarations, your visions,
to fashion my own world in light
like those imagined in desire.

November 2019

Gifts

Gifts are seldom innocent
unless we are children
without understanding
what it means to give—
smiling openly at humor
when we find the world funny,
or tendering “I love you,”
simply because we mean it.
But those are the gifts we want,
and the gifts we will try to give,
long after the end of innocence.

November 2019

Morning after rain

The morning after dark rain
smells like spring
feels like opportunity
belligerent and innocent
in youthful optimism—
even when we are old,
even when it is cold, and
we know it will rain again.
Even so: it is a moment
to be simply enjoyed
peacefully, joyfully,
fresh with bright wet dawn.

November 2019

Glass tongue

Sometimes his tongue is made of stone,
and glass slips out, smooth as a river;
He does not notice until it strikes & shatters
into splintering cuts upon her tenderness,
drawing blood to prove the crime.
Bewildered, he might apologize, or worse
defend his violent words with more—
but only seldom know the reasons why
that careless mouth became so harsh,
nor how to tell before the slivers bite.
It is a flaw of his own making, yet also
human tragedy: blind damage strikes,
heedless of intent or any feeling,
tearing in an irretrievable instant
new red-line intercepts across her skin
only time and unmerited grace might heal.

November 2019

"Take a picture"

“Take a picture,” he insists
of this simple magnificence
—and I do, because he asked
but the glory I’ll recall
was stored in his shining eyes
in ways a picture fails to realize.

November 2019

Do not destroy

In your anger do not destroy
The miscreant, the charlatan
The enemy who slaps your face:
For behind his confident visage
Is a child you do not know
Who may weep on bathroom floors
Or curse his life in the bitter cold;
A tender thing, whose strength
Has overcome thus far—but only just.
Do not supply the demons
Who stand over that fragile frame
You’ll never see, nor know.
Accept no abuse; and yet
In strength, bear his pride,
His bitter self-assurance—
And refuse to scar
another human heart.

November 2019

Knowing myself

I know myself
so much terribly better
than I ever wanted to.
I don’t hate myself, nor
resent what taught me—
but neither did I desire
this cold new horizon, this
dark discovery of self.
We deceive ourselves,
then learn through pain
to see the truth. But
it doesn’t make it easy
or even wanted; not
yet, anyway, not now.
It is what it is. Wisdom
grows upon us like moss
and the world takes on
a new flavor, a new color
and life goes on.

November 2019

The sky in Autumn

The deep blue of Autumn
sky calls to me, persistently
whether bright and crisp
or clothed in gray sweater-cloud,
anointed by the rain or
hidden by the moonlight;
her admirers wave gold tips
and slashing reds, remind me
that her royalty alone allows
their vibrant colors, otherwise
garish, irreverent, unmatched.
November skies speak open things
to me: promise eager possibility;
I fall in love under these skies
with Life itself and its paths,
fresh in every afternoon
unexplored and impatient
for me to summit, there to find
her deep blue sky awaits
and beckons me on for more





November 2019: I wrote a lot of poems about Fall. Hope the other seasons aren’t jealous, but I have a good explanation: Fall is just so much better than the other seasons.

Freedom, Empirical

You shall build empires: testaments
to human will and spirit, flung up
from the surface of a tired Earth,
whose gravity cannot contain you.
You shall paint upon the canvas of time
bright visions and marvels, difficult
even to imagine—only you shall:
will overcome, triumph, create. But then
in victory, surrounded by vast success,
how shall you compare to the bird
who is free, sitting on an electric wire
whose purpose she cannot divine;
perching on the distant pinnacle
of a towering mansion she did not build;
mounting on a wind she did not blow,
to drift in places humans only dimly know.
She does these things on her own behalf,
drifting to drift, eating to eat, laying eggs
because she must. Will you, then, envy
this mindless freedom, someday—
accomplished, victorious, and yet entombed
by the soaring walls of your own triumph?
Or can you balance, with a feather’s delight
these opposite things: the weight of triumph
and the ease of thin-boned flight?

November 2019

Stairs in the fall

Fall is a beautiful stranger
shifting before our eyes
we think we know, but then
whose brilliant colors slip
to another tree, another field,
one long transition: motion’s curve
unstopping on its winter path.
At each new moment’s glance,
we find the season changed
—and so have we.

November 2019

Early Dark

The early dark slaps my face
like an unexpected loss, and yet
I greet it like an old friend.
With it return cold winds, promises
of frigid winter midnights; but now
here in the baffling first moments
I set aside its threats and welcome
something dark and cold
and intimately familiar.

November 2019

Unexpected Moon

The unexpected moon
is a gift to delight children
looking up at something new
in a place it shouldn’t be:
“Look,” says the Universe—
“you thought you knew, but
look again!” And so we do,
we do, we do, over and over
now looking past the moon
for another unexpected piece,
out of place, hidden just for us.
We will delight to find it:
for we are children, all of us
compared to the ages spent
hiding pieces of the universe
in just these certain ways—and
forever such shall we remain.

November 2019

Discovery

Discovery belongs to the discoverer:
a fact that age forgets, as if naïveté
were shameful, or innocence a sin.
But no! In fact, the things you found
belong to you; your joy in that moment
is yours forever and for free. Rather, not
bullied into cynical self doubt, stand
as explorers have since human eyes
first opened on an unseen world,
revel in each leaf and blade of grass,
and in it all find the majesty of God
in an endless revelation of creation.






November 2019

Fall

Fall is drowsy, a meandering
toward the dreaming sleep of winter;
it is not death, it does not mourn
but flings color towards the sky
in celebration of a sabbath rest:
come spring, there is new life
and work to be done in summer—
but now is time for pondering
the years behind, and yet to come
in stillness, and comfort, and joy.






November 2019