Poetry
Photo by Yuriy Mazur
at Adobe Stock
Dear Reader
By way of the stars,
on the tightrope between the worlds,
the grace of the human form, risen from the sea
into the seer in the seen, kin to all life
across the pale blue dot, to live
in accord with our vision:
we cling to our strange notion of what we are,
the divine image we sketch in the mirror.
Days like seeds scatter from our hands,
in the wind that moves like an abstraction.
There's a voice in the river that murmurs,
One eye is the sun, the other the moon.
Comes the knock, and we must answer,
best with painterly care, composed
to dab the palette and let the canvas speak,
the chromatic climate of the mind
directing the missions of the brain:
synapses of sun-showers; synapses
of sunflowers lifted and bowed;
unspeakable badlands; enigmatic
designs of amorphous players skirting
beneath the surface of thought, ingrained
heroes and demons, and which is which;
the end of days palpable in silos
deep in the earth, and in fissures of oaths;
the rehearsals of sirens, fires and floods;
medicinal sex, drugs, and rock and roll;
the wisdom of the jitterbug and the waltz;
the dream of love in the dark; the luscious
caress, the ache of ecstasy—
not forgetting the repugnance
of our failures, our wounds and scars
given and taken, absorbed and returned:
the timeless feast of wine and blood,
often mingled, indistinguishable.
Amended by unconditional love,
we praise the pictures our children make
and can't wait to show us, trusting
tomorrow to exalt the work
we cherish today, and endure.
In a bastardized age, like any other,
the continuum describes a circle.
A grain of sand in the summer sun
glimmers like a star, and iridescence
glows across the snow in winter sunlight.
The bedrock change continues unaltered:
the indelible hues we make of ourselves,
and for good or ill, all the colors sing.
My Sorrow Sang to Me
All that winter, my sorrow sang to me.
Drifting off, I heard a brook above my bedroom door,
the roar of tumbling snowmelt
that soothed the wounds that gobbled up the stars
and filled the heavens with emptiness.
Indistinct voices bubbled in the flow.
Charmed by their inflections—
resolute, bright, confident, unhurried—
nightly I followed the murmurs
upstream, to impassable cliffs
and the wayfarers ensconced on the other side.
At the nexus of multiple worlds,
where the lines between them dissolve
and a day spans millenia,
profiles in silhouette towered on moonlit crags.
Having dragged myself through love's gauntlet
hand over hand, clawing tough roots
that like the brook emerged from nothing,
I'd found my place among them. Behind the moon,
the stars had returned. I dreamt
of the fearsome darkness dawn will bring,
across which people called to me.
The last passage is always yourself.
All that winter, my sorrow sang to me,
and in the spring, the brook fell silent.
When Nothing Happens
Under a mackerel sky, my son and I have the park to ourselves.
I give him a push on the swing, an easy rhythm among the trees.
Away, he arcs, and returns, his childhood in microcosm,
from my POV. All at once, he leans back, closes his eyes
and chortles, I can see the sky.
Adding zip, I cry, No, you can't!
Up, he sails. Yes, I can!
On we go, till his little red sneakers graze the clouds,
and it's a ten-foot drop from his crown to the ground—
like a miniature Spider-Man, he heaves himself upright,
and my heart restarts. I watch him slow to a stop,
alight, and run to the slide, as if nothing happened.
Maybe, caught up in the moment, I didn't push him so hard
he had to save himself. The son I'd protect with my life.
Dad, watch this! Arms in the air, he stands atop the ladder,
jumps, glides down, and sprints into my arms.
I don't let on that I'm shaken. We start back to the car.
Isaiah runs ahead, across the grass. Take anything from me except
my son and the purest of loves that is the hardest to master.
The silence rising from a speck of clay fills the sky.