lives cautiously within the sound of his own name.

trusts windows that question the passage of light.

will never understand being shaken by the wind.

 

sycamore shines like a day happy to be alone. alive.

without the fear of the rose within the rose within the rose...

everybody awake, near, unguarded.

snow

free fall and crystalline

intricate machines of vanished moments

the outside of silence

 

 

we pull off our clothes. look far into each other. become 

lightning swags swaying through summer.

time unravels into color.

 

her blue eyes ached seeing newborn earth. shadows,

luminous, of wind-killing trees. left old choices on the floor

around her bed. follower of dusk, decay and lost beauty.

 

from an inscription etched on water i learned to tie

a small voice to falling leaves.

when i find you will you be looking for me?

will we know which one is alive?

 

liquid. as a lake between two waters.

as the flooded ark of home.

my shadow in water shall die of thirst.

 

found a coin in last night's loam. smaller than

silver. larger than gold. the child's cup of moonlight

throws a blue shadow. where mist rakes its tines. soul throbs.

 

she says we are what we cannot see.

something eternal worn down to the human.

whose blood has some light from the birth of the sky.

 

a woman and a man live alone, together, marry, share a snowfall.

trains pass through the nights of their dreams. without lights. without sound.

without disturbing either soul. the sky turns pearl at the end of the snow.

 

frailty. the face painted on a window. the window painted on a wall.

not all can tell the one wounded whose wounds don't show.

night dreams of a star climbing the cold crooked sky—burden

of dignity broken apart—into a trembling bed where his heart will stop.

 

gloom is a waltz seeking heaven

a star among clots and murdered flowers

the fate i have drawn from your eyes.

men bring many bowls for a single grain of rice

the guest left behind, saying, death

is full, my people, move on.

 

a blue lake sleeps at the foot of a blue mountain. where my 

life is an island adrift. poems sail into a mirrorless day.

each end of the sky moored to a single blue tree.

 

cedar smoke. mesas. the cranes will come back. strange

that a naked mind is here at all. wisdom turns to dust and dust

becomes wisdom. why are the names of our angels unknown?

 

rain falls without clouds. without sky. without judgment. timber

by timber the old structures are brought down. a poet of white flowers,

lying near death, discovers salt in the depths of heaven.

 

love song. we seem to have forgotten

the iron fence

in the fog.

 

an empty bowl falls to the floor in the hush before a storm

preparing a single light to mark the exit where silence crowds

greeting  night's dark horse and gaping cart as friends of distance and love.

 

space has no gate except an eye. or the gap between lips

too parted. in your absence plates rattle. silence wails

behind the wall. to be healed, must all be crippled.

 

when a snowflake melts the path's completed.

no grass in the field. stars give birth to four in the morning.

i begin one endless sentence to remember all words.

 

being of one body, we undress together. down to a satchel

of lost poems. love hides nothing. lives in veins.

god's heartbeat's heard. when one pounds on stone.

 

the night you are not conceived silent messengers

come and go. to say a dark cathedral better houses the moon.

let me never forget how i abandoned my home.

 

skin forms around the shadows it will hold within. milk mixed with

night forms blood. the patient ship has raised up its lanterns. Jesus-like.

gnawed by the sea. while a simple cairn endures the frost.