knowing your purpose is the fall of rain :: how gently can you live

 

how pure must the wounding be :: to stop my knife from bleeding

 

by rhythm of sorrow or rhythm of snow :: has the world known your soul

 

we know so little about the journey :: when canyon smells of moon and mind

 

it will smell like snow :: last house standing :: that draws your darkness out

 

between the soul and its autumn :: all time can be found

 

into the mist

your life left behind

i never arrive

 

beneath my house of memory :: a wind of unknown depth

 

morning :: in every direction :: my face losing sight of the shore

 

in love's one tear

filling the whole flesh

hear me

 

the story is strange :: the stream i walk in, beyond reach

 

shall the dead in our eyes see only clear skies

seedling of another species :: is the language that i speak

why is the mottled sun a sickness of my eye

 

 

who dares to know their eggshell guards an unenlightened dawn

 

i remember

trees in joy

and the sane wonder of being mown

 

three sequence poems published today by Heliosparrow!

 

spirit jumping from puddle to blood—

and inside my trees

a joyful scream

 

sweet blood drawn into dawn :: robinsong

 

can bumblebee pull your sun underground

 

if i lie silent at night

won't rain hear my heart

what is the mark of a child

in whom the sea has been crossed

upon how many crosses before your death

has the midnight sun appeared

 

by whom do my broken branches become a vernal cross

 

in the bedroom of the epidemic will my devotion to sky end without dawn

was my shadow a bird :: in the desert i could have been

is crocus the flesh where your absence nests

 

should promises of snow empty the world of white

whose rose is brewed in the skull of the moon

when i am wordless shall my voice :: unfold within the ears of the dead

 

what color of rose is waiting for my name

how did moss find its way to the roof of night

if the moon returns to life :: where shall i hide my heart

 

shall my wandering forever be :: naked to the touch of a moon

 

who put my birth into the hollow of a tree

will the rose behind your eyes ever come ashore

is the loss of one who has no place

found in water or wind

 

how does one search darkness

for a midnight from the past

for how many years can one fall inside the moon

shall all suns hold inside

a dawn that was never alive

Three poems published by Heliosparrow on 2/12/21!!

 

is awakened the word

for a seed that dies, then is sown

when i believe in what wind listens for

why does my nest unravel

can anyone else open a poem

to the fate of its reader

 

when i fold my eyes until they are smaller than light

is that the end of a day

if i could read the book of twilight would

earth return my child

who else sweeps their garden

to see what a whisper sees

 

why can't the touch of a thorn 

be divided into infinite light

and why can't i grow light

from a seed

when all that is dust returns to song

                                             where will i be found

 

upon the death of the mortal vine :: shall my veins grow new wine

 

when we turn against the sea

how many deserts appear

when the poem sheds its final skin

why does one still have to wait for dawn

for how many lives after i am gone

will my heart come searching for me

 

how many years have fallen

along the path between two autumns

is the leaf falling through my shadow

also my shadow

and when my rain bleeds to death

whose poppies are fed

 

when night coughs

can you taste your birth

are my skies too many to bury

why is shadow the shortest route

to unexpected light

 

where is the river

to cleanse my oceans of sorrow

how many dawns

have tied a prayer

to my rose

why are there species of flame

found only in our dreams

 

prayer kneels down

wind builds a nest

for the passenger you carry without knowing

 

There's been a poem published in NOON 17 & 18.

 

why does the clearest water

stop a knife from bleeding

when did my soul begin to repeat

the migration of cranes

how does one gather seeds

that have drifted into another day

how much earth must i lose

to wear the moon's white shoe

 There's been a poem published in Right Hand Pointing, Issue 141.

where is the river that will cleanse my oceans of sorrow

 

 

in a world that renounces moon, wind :: how shall my forests sway

 

will remember more than i knew

is called to a different world

burns like a leaf in autumn

 

shall the speed of light see my face

standing falling naked without speaking without hearing the whisper

 

where will they scatter the blue dust of earth

how many others afraid of night have thieved for this criminal moon

can i find the way out of summer by mapping a monarch's wing

 

 

leaning into the wind :: i am examined for wings

 

moon undressed        the man i lost        looked at naked me

should i delight in the occasion or search for another chaos

should i feed the mist

should i flood

who else sweeps their garden to see what a whisper sees

how deep into my life has morning pressed its thorn

the leaf falling through my shadow is also my shadow

can you recall the first poem to see you

why is a luna moth in eclipse
beyond my grasp

how did the smell of rain arrive on earth

without a body i could fall :: into the eyes of the living

the home prepared for my only arrival :: is all i shall leave behind

the rose that should die :: let me in

the body the bough :: where i learn to write with snow

my gardens won't keep out the cold

how lonely to distill bees from their honey

i will not wear snow above a whisper

i will fill my tomb by living on earth

i will have gone the great distance bound in one skin

breath as a measure of time :: my redwood rises above

another beginning i will never leave :: this killing spring

the garden is my progress through a seed

i feel i have become too many to go on waiting

starting a poem is the way i see her face

illness in the weeds could become a way to live and dream

a black daybreak for those whom we bury

the sky took my life to explain that nothing flew away

by what thread will i live when the sun unravels

may the origin of leaves remember its time within me

only your mother when she was young
and the world nowhere in sight
yet changed

are the missing pages of my shadow :: poet or priest

inside the dying of my apple tree
the sky is cold
the earth is green

moon lies in its bed :: staring into the fire

understands what i do not :: stops the knife from bleeding

crossing cold fields i am part of the sun

to bring the wind what it listens for :: how many dreams are needed

fields of dark sky sink away gathering the capsized rain

as a child i often laughed though the house would later burn down

nothing in the sky that points to my death

just a glimpse of the pine that will take my place

your glow is the moon in an ocean of its own

just dunes dreaming beside me :: it feels easy to be the sea

afterlife in the middle of the night, i hear silence arranging a troubled sea

everything i love is where no one has walked

then i felt your spirit twirl the leaves in a place where the world is thin

through a hole in the wind you hand me :: the yellow dress of the sun

how do i explain my death without touching your body

stone as smooth as the fate of the moon rolling out of the sea

white face of the moon on a separate blue path

whose flight is ever finished before the sky grows old and opaque

there are many broken lines i see in a single living tree

waking the mountain 

an unpublished collection of monostich

one white bone and all of november to light

an old hollow tree is the walk from sky to dream

my day ends listening to wings