butterflies are mating. tortures go on.

metamorphosis at the crossroads has killed peace.

god's way of seeing. fallen leaves.

 

beyond the past of where we were born. is the september of wanting

to bring someone there. by hands which cannot stop the little good

gone wrong. to a heart that dies slowly. our permanent home.

 

beneath the old house dim forests grow. black walnut

dreams drop weary shadows. windows flutter and break

against dawn. cold mist frees itself from river.

 

there is a small boat waiting. in the middle of the page

where a poem begins. and goes no further. serenity.  the child in

the womb brings her mother a name. rubs serenity into her eyes.

 

as his lover comes home he thinks about which story.

at the center of a drop of rain is there stillness. is there voice.

the answer is a wound. but so unimportant. and yet he trembles.

 

silence in a poem grows the way death roots. hand to mouth

to moon. with not one mystery less than needed to guard what

least understands. with a heart open to all. and to none.

 

against the symmetry of coyote's penetrating eyes. we feed

mouthfuls of soul to our mirrors. expose the sex

of the rose to winter's raw light. read genesis as procreation.

 

like time spent in front of a silent piano. i have shown you

to no one. taste of self. i walk on our skin. without letters to trace

the space between us. skin cold as the flesh of shadow.

 

rain falling through old soles. the empty sees into the

empty. and we've come home again. the shallow of night pulls

off our clothes. under the rusted tongues of bridges.

 

death invented man on a day without inspiration. ashes

slept on the edge of the knife. a broken tree chewed abandonment 

and salt. no one was left tearless. in a universe without tears.

 

these hands are like brothers. one weaker than the other.

one loved more. one wields the knife. the other cleans

a small church. we have great admiration for their faith.

 

a tree of singular stature towers above above

an unpitying field. where a boy begins to know. 

love wears the mask worn by the one who shapes silence.

 

a divided window dissects the sky. cemetery

plots. canceled mind. nothing falls to earth without

emitting light. dark voice. bruised eyes.

 

 

one by one by one by one. men pass buckets.

the hand counts its fingers. the ocean inventories sand.

nights leave without a dream. suns reappear.

 

direction is the disease of roads. but whispers

swarm at the center of being. from artists with winged

hands there is much to learn. of freedom and wild honey.

 

a fist of clouds burst the heart. everything

in wind became theft. everywhere was music but silent.

creation of the one who was never found. and now there is autumn.

 

kneels to drink. drink your face from the wind.

those waters where absence is kept. deserves the dust

and ashes of your bed. whose night is full of holes.

 

used by pain for joy. by stone and salt for

polish. preferred food of fire. without taking a

backward step. or losing the power to leave one undone.

 

what swims ashore. and what is driven aground.

innocence. balance. the morning star. rainbows

above the wearied dead should not end in gold. tears.

 

some learn to fear the garden. where the rose

was a false flower. messengers enter and leave without

a trace. and the orchid knows in its heart it will be injured.

 

seedling of an exhausted species, whose language can i speak.

word is wind. and sky, windless.

leaves give tongue until their skin burns green.

 

on the first day of life. rain stands alone in the field. and

there is no place that is not someone else. on the first day

of death. the moon begins counting its delicate birds.

 

the first dawn is too small to wake

the soul. but an island emerges. eyes

reopen. limits expand to the shape of our hands.

 

water pulls my secret deep into

its pockets. loves the drowning i do not

love. where the words that won't let me write survive.

 

every moon in old clothes finds its way

to my room. every scar learning the way of shadow.

we stand together. arrayed like sunflowers. facing the void.

 

the horse comes back alone. but there is 

no alone. no empty bed. no love that is not 

pain. no time to perfect one's art. no horse.

 

small lake. long journey of sky.

sky that sang at the birth of time...

of a blue eye. of a dark day.

 

when i find you you no longer

have age. one who is yet to come.

hole in the sky with mists and cliffs. pathless.

 

dawn. the blouse of the sky

spreads open. your ear soft

against the mouth of my blood.

 

space in the attic was the source of hush.

then heat, then hands. ages of dust fell from those hands.

dew upon a faultless mountain.

 

sunlight is a room where nothing

is forgotten. a gate left open.

poems one would be glad to have written.

 

like a red corpuscular heart. like the swim

in a midnight harbor. with the strength of curved lines.

spirals. i saw the rings of saturn.

 

who is ironweed. is the holy

motive of wildflower. green begins to rain

inside chrysalis. and within rain's iron interiority. a torch.

 

may your voice be the cord that

lowers my heart. through foam and stone.

into the flow of the ancient green.

 

the blue hills open a window.

i greet the poem with calloused hands.

silence ticking in the walls.

 

our few possessions are weighed leaving the bus.

some clothes, a few toiletries. all we will have.

whether dying forward. whether living back.

 

we stand at the edge of drowning.

the water is small. familiar and unknowingly

deep. silent fish slip through the night around us.

 

the path opens between the eyes of a deer.

a child discovers his indefinite sky.

my hands stroke a wind that has lived out its life.

 

nothing raked the wind. no cry

split the trees. until

what was born fell silent.

 

rusts and weaknesses pool in low

lonely places. where i thought water would listen.

to the mouth of every sigh.

 

not to know stones are alive, i

could not converse with silence.

my shadow would rest.

 

death will remove its shoes. and

the heart begin its return migration

alone. walking on water. breathing stone.

 

the small poem :: knife of brief life

 

another world's end.

dimensions of the box:

silence by silence by silence.

 

lift up the sheet where

sleep spills its blood.

ferns drip in the shade.

 

huge blue wings rise, fly. flow away.

listen and hear nothing.

lake unhurried. clouds fully awake.

 

such turmoil in dreams! so many

souls unliving! psyche's cauldron brewing

ashes, a beginning....

 

we begin our heart        with one wing

 

a hand reaches down, delivers

a postcard from heaven—

carrara marble, stigmata, 1964 world's fair.

 

poets with poets wafting from their mouths—

what's really going on...

my warped flame dances with the dark one's heart.

 

inside the dying of the apple tree

forests shed old rain.

the house of souls stands like haze.

 

sunlight grows lovingly across the ceiling

for the eyes of the infant lying on his back.

the stone i have struggled with finds its place at last.

 

lie down in fire. side with

the defeated. twist the 

sublime and ubiquitous spiral.

 

a deep hole opens in my shadow—

a black umbrella turned to ash.

the breath of one risen from the dead climbs out.

 

first we open newly fashioned eyes.

then we climb with limbs of light

the tree, the branch, the fallen flower.

 

late day. four panes

of rippled glass. sun and self exhausted

by the weight of the task.

 

doorway of the morning i love :: that you bring me back in

 

sweet work, to :: think in songs

 

she is older than when she died.

grandmother is.

i worry she may fall going down the stairs.

 

the child you were whispers something unheard...

i've sown the seed of a galaxy!

sunflowers are stepping into snow!

 

what to do with the box in the basement.

childhood searches for an answer.

moonlight sings on the skin of a breeze.

 

in some lives, windows sleep.

they hide death in yesterday's breeze,

bury silence in a forest of wounded trees.

 

i don't want new songs with old knees.

learn. listen.

            where burns the fog one must become.

 

peak of summer, firewood mosaic

stacked piece by piece.

the only shelter near, snow white clouds.

 

one can heal

and another is healed by being wounded.

death stands some souls up on their feet.

 

when i was different

hummingbirds stood in mid-air, stared in.

we are living it again.

 

horses lie down beside me, one nuzzles my back.

dream life. july.

strawberries feed from my hands.

 

from whether.com

grievous heat is the asphalt forecast

skies are to remain emaciated by self doubt

while the outlook for death, terminally obese, is congestive failure of heart

 

by what thread will i spin when the sun unravels

will the last of my bodies fly away with the geese

knowing your purpose is the fall of rain

                                                                        how gently can you live

 

another ocean

but the same helpless island.

choice vanishes into a willow at dusk. rain rolls in.

 

a monotonous ferry ride

to stand alone in the wind

waiting for the beginning.

 

bullets of rain.

children will try to fill the holes in their sky.

basement world, weeping walls.

 

whose gospel has left my heart unread.

whose sun

shall speak my eyes.

 

before wisdom comes

we know

hands and trees shall be broken

 

millions of light years

of one bottomless dream

watches over my sleep

 

new prints in the forest clay.

cumulus builds a sky.

whose shadow goes slipping away.

 

the audience calls out a name

the name dies instantly, cries to god

is made flesh, bleeds, dies

joins the audience, calls out a name

i will know it

    outside the dream

when it comes

    behind the calm

because it breathes

 

sunset.

because i can die i am living.

everyone i love but do not know opening in the wind.

 

corn and clover.

where am i going...

the secret never arrives.

 

untied from its willows

the river dies.

stars graze on time in the desert sky.

 

gathered the freedom

to be an anchor

wandering among the waves.

 

restoring the egg to its skimpy nest :: gently closing its eye

 

can you sew me a pocket :: filled with answers and doves

 

stepped into life's water

stone without skin

felt for the first time cold winds

 

peace to the death

which becomes a rose

peace to the heart

which greens you

 

our music preserves the echo :: of stones washing the sea

 

the sky you awakened in the eyes of the rain :: holds the moon the night and the reason to remain

 

let wild seed wake before the rains grow old :: before the moon is shut out of your heart

 

washing my poetry i sweeten the sea :: until the green of your island is saved

 

moon sheds moon

opens an infinite eye

the risk of being reborn throbs through the sky

 

to be water that has not found a well

            to die young

                        fallen from a cloud

 

if there is a gate it will be left open

if there is a border may the dead guide you over

the road follows where you go

 

birth was a drama that one member of the cast does not remember

 

soul

not substance but naked 

            —voice in a mirror with tiny cracks —

where the other face of night is looking

             —kissed by what the poet sees —

resisting all that falls from god

             —nothing else can be so still

 

just enough darkness to forest the world :: then light dawns in one leaf

 

last drops of rain in hands of a breeze    stirring what others need

 

in the throb beneath a drop of blood :: i feel my wounds at war

 

in the oar i've abandoned i long for the sea

 

when its suffering's washed away :: what remains of clay