Small joy in bird song
Hold tight the reins of longing
Imagine us whole
Tag Archives: poem
Haiku for a sequestered Saturday
Plants starting from seed
Soil enriched by love
Summer will bring light
The right note
Tomorrow it might have been fifty-two
not just thirteen years since our thirty-ninth
Aligned with family and gratitude
the day always reflected joy,
the heat of our love folded into stuffing
The missing of him has gotten harder
but it seems he knows. I came upon
the sound of his small gasp
that wrapped me up each time
in beauty gauze, when finally ready
I presented myself to his gaze
before our evenings out.
Deliciousness itself, just knowing
that he would when I did, and
that he always meant it.
And I can smile now, the memory
a pitch perfect gift.
.
.
Audio: Read by the author.
Haiku for a friend’s birthday
Walk the hills to home
Where love is found ripening
The true birthday gift
Connection
In song, music puts its hands around my heart and my words think tears are a puddle to splash through, shoeless. Color often stops my breath, and I am its willing prisoner. A sudden memory coming on fast might need release. Any of these call up joy or tears, and it is all wonderful. To me. When the signal comes they might glide to me in a waltz, or whirl up on the skirts of a wild mazurka. Better yet, ride in on the smoothness of an alto sax.
How to darn a heart
If mending is the only route
then hold it safe, to
dance its beat
against your palm.
To brace the fraying edge,
thread light with memories
and run their warmth
the whole way round.
Bottom up or top down,
the strongest strands of love
comprise the weft, running stitch
to running stitch.
Then left to right or right to left,
hope forms the warp
needled over, under
in between.
It will look different darned,
the rend lightly scabbed,
dozing as it heals, until the next
onslaught of love.
Audio: Read by the author.
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NaPoWriMo Day 1 (my view of time being elastic), the prompt was to provide instructions on how to do something.
Three
Absent the fury of those blue eyes
no afghan hills here no war only mourning doves call
I will claim peace never having fought
and watch round leaf cuttings reach for quiet morning light
Here the snow tunnels of red squirrels
many possible escapes but are there none for you
Waiting
She pried my eye open,
brilliant Venus did, balanced
just above the pine spikes,
tired of waiting for me
to get on with dreaming.
A clear sky, meteors done,
still hours away from light.
Sleep brained, back to bed
with snoring dogs,
a dream of love waiting
across a bog, only reached
by floating stones,
until I balked and stepped
to solid ground.
She knew this one
was in the queue, and
did not want it buried
in the dreamless part of sleep,
but felt, and have me warned.
Fragment
Each time I try to find
the edge of space, searching
in the darkest part of blue,
past stars and their hangers on
orbiting a single mote of dust,
it turns out I’m that bird
expecting infinity but
finding sudden glass.
For Mary Oliver.
Late present
The moon brought me a gift
last night, before the
solstice rain moved in.
I left the crispness
of my northern woods
to walk the dew off grass again
with you. It’s late, the
house lights dark, the night
all midsummer lushness,
bell buoys ringing softly.
We know the way by feel
across the lawns and
down the hill to home,
but can’t pass up the garden
with its flat topped walls.
We sit, shoulders touching,
stone still warm, and let our
breath find a rhythm together
after days apart. Then on
our way again, to soft
lamp light on varnished
wood, and pick up where
we were before the first
mosquito bit.
This morning I still feel
your hands, your skin on mine,
and smile.
Audio: Read by the author.
And Peggy Sue
They called him Crane, not Ichabod but the bird. I’d see him Saturday nights at the tap room where he won big money throwing darts, bony fingers on a different circuit from the rest of him when as he drank. Never pretty in daylight — when drunk, his angles seemed smoothed out, almost aging movie star vaselined. The dim lit corners left the knife scar on his neck alone, a dull flash of on-off michelob blinking onto his baldness. One of those nights college boys found the bar, and while the rest of his townie pals shunned the clueless preps, he fought them at the dart board one by one with his dead aim, metal sinking into cork almost soundless, like a perfect dive knifes into chlorined blue. Always left them broke, their egos bleeding out. The drunker he got, the better he played, groove sunk cheeks split by a grin. He took them all, keening Peggy Sue softly between each throw.
Seeing them off
Today they are still here,
and I am too, in late September.
My hummingbird pair. One darts in
to feed, the other perches
drinking deeply, tipping her head back
to let the nectar slide.
I feel that energy sweet and cool
down my throat.
Their absence looms, a large bell
with muffled clappers tolling
unopposed, reddening the trees,
exiling light, ushering in cold.
Lately the question, will they
visit me again, or will there be
someone else looking out my window
twelve months on?
Each year it is harder let them go,
as if there were a choice.
Life With Horace 