A Walk to the Lake

Today I heard the world,
like us, is wounded. She needs
our wonder and our tenderness.

Listen carefully and you will hear
her pleading for tending only you
and I can give.

Step outside and relish her.
Slowly. With open ears
and eyes. And soon.

Befriending her begets
A kind of birth,

A well-rooted bringing forth.

In turn, earth will ravish
and astonish us.

Lake rippling at dusk, green hills
punctuated by boulders big as hippos,

birds halfway to the moon,
clouds sprawling across sky's
pink belly--

all calling us into a way of being wild
and whole we've yearned for

in our sleep-walking state
before the other birth.

sublime physicality

delicious crunch crunch crunch
of cold apple, bare feet firm

and buzzing on this sturdy floor,
blue bathrobe wrapped so cozy,

i couldn't ask for more.

       

       Paradigm Lift                                                                                                                              

I prefer, instead of that afterlife

Idea espoused by some if not many,

or the equally believed article of faith

In a murky nothingness, to imagine

A very big room about the girth of Nebraska

That’s filled with the living, the dead

And the not-yet-born. This motley trinity

Sweetly shuffling together in stocking feet,

Sometimes raucously, at others' silently

Across a shimmering vast dance floor.

They’re telling corny jokes, laughing

And mostly beaming, feeling lighter

Having forgotten hurts and wrongs now past

Or those let-downs certain one day to transpire.

Even wallflowers blossom here.

Smells of freesia and alyssum swirl

With tendrils of night-blooming jasmine
Kissing pregnant air; my lips can feel

Babies kicking. When I’m quiet 

I hear their breathing softly wafting

As they spin and sashay round and round

Without perspiring to lift each other up

In tender spirals high and higher—

Beloved past, bright-eyed future

All embraced by those now present.

And everyone is gleaming….

What Is A Poem?

an arrival
between
two departures.

an appearance
among
several
vanishings.

an apparition
between
two bedevilments.

a stone
onto
a pool
of quiet.

a flame
between
two campsites.

an enchantment
between
two blizzards.

an epiphany
between
two forgettings.

a hawk
above
two griefs.

a river

between
two deserts.

a mercy

between

death row

and a volcano.

a stone
onto
a pond
of silence.

a root
between
two earthquakes.

a man
between
two chasms.

a moonlit meadow

between the inmate

and the warden.

a shout
between
two sleeps.

a dapple of light
between
two darknesses.

Three Thousand Five Hundred and Two (2018)*

rain in darkness shifts

and shimmers

the faintest child’s voice

her final cry for help,

a mere glimmer.

(stop this we ought,

yet have not)

now dazed by days of rain

and news that shoots

and downpours

where we’ve gathered

to weep,

to rage,

to scream,

ask why again

this pain

while Congress prays, delays,

denies and blathers.

we bow our heads in shame

as we should,

blurred eyes cast where grief

under mud hides buried 

inside false beliefs of impotence

as numbly, we shiver awake

to more clearly see

in depths of darkness lives

a flame for all to warm beside.

Together we must protect,

speak out, sustain

and tend this light

so that children’s

safety becoming fact

is finally in truth

delivered.

*The approximate number of children ages 6-18 killed 
by firearms in the US in 2018

Real Faith

      is

knowing

in our deep
bones

through
   empty
       space

we are forever
 

    free-falling....

like a precious drop

of mercury

our hearts quiver

as we, no longer

hidden,

descend, bidden

and unbidden

time and again,

into darkness’

supple arms,

these rivers

of uncertainty

and this spacious

befriending moment.