Poetry

Flight

2014-W06-2

Is your skin porous
Sometimes I must trace its lines to be sure
Find again the telltale blemishes
The assurance of your humanity

In dreams I hover
Fourteen inches above the ground
Press forward and let the earth become a rushing blur

Can you see me then
Shifting my weight between worlds
Breaking and shattering into a thousand pieces
Hiding beneath the support of all things

Heat

2013-W36-5

It is hard to keep these double-edged words sheathed,
With my hand on the hilt and blood
drowning out sound in my ears.

It is hard to keep my eyes focused above the horizon,
Against the sun’s bright glare.

Tomorrow may be cloudy and cool
but today the heat stings upward from a glaring pavement.

Contours

2013-W05-2

I feel the shape of last night
A great chasm
Endless black stretchings
Estranging me from the past

Darknesses upon darkness
Terrifying and shapeless movements
Too grotesque for the eye
All the more sickening in the pale light of dawn

2013

2012-W51-5

Why such high hopes for a new year?
What grace is present in a blank calendar?
How does such inspiration and idealism spring
From this arbitrary demarcation?

But ‘hope springs eternal’ and cannot long be quenched,
So here are the hopes for the year just ahead:

Happiness through focused optimism;
The creative maelstrom uncurbed;
A bleeding, open heart.

When the year rings in, may these sparks find true life;
Springing from the ashes of a year whose hope is spent.

Three Sisters

2011-W08-6

On the day the world began,
I was born with the earth and the moon.
If you wonder how old I am,
It’s billions through and through.

On the day I was conceived,
The sun walked among mortal men.
As daughter of light I do naught or do right;
I can lie neither by lips nor pen.

On the day I came of age,
The moon claimed the night as her own.
My youth is tied to her domain;
As sure as the tides I’ve not grown.

Breathe

2011-W05-5

ev’ry object breathes.
drawing moments in and out;
slowly cloaked in time

Summer

2010-W34-2

corn, it seems
springs full grown from the ground
to towering heights

and soy leaves
in their months-long dance
sway with the wind and rain

The grub feasts and
the sparrow as well
in shade and brush and dirt

for the summer sun beats relentlessly
sustaining all things

Soliloquy

2010-W32-4

I would like to think I could be a poet on purpose.
Delivering smooth lines to you convincingly.
Stunning you not with what I said, but how I said it.
But it doesn’t really suit us, talking like that