“Full Flower Moon,” “Stilling Point,” and “Offering”

I almost fell back asleep

Tossed and snugged down soft

Amid dream disquiet

Impenetrable

Implacable

Day’s debris and remnant dream

Echoes distant

Once found teeming

Feed me down night’s rabbit hole

This errant trek

A pilgrim’s passage

Fallen into folly

As missteps now prove fatal

Before breaking din and dread

Of Second Coming

May burgeons blithely afresh

Awash in blue-belled budding

Bliss Persephone prodding

Without sense or solace for

Winter’s waiting turn through dearth

And quiet discontent

I almost fell back asleep

In middle night disquiet

Full Flower Moon beguiling

Whiling my wakened face

Flooding remnant dream

In otherworldly thrall

Of moonlit passage brief

Empty of all but this

Impenetrable

Implacable

As remnant dream slips between

Like nocturne whisps of

Fleeting cloud undone

I almost fell back asleep

Seductive sense eluding

My slipping grasp through fingers

Swiftly like water cupped from

Rippling stream as if to quench

This parching thirst

End with a whisper

Soughed flirting moon

Muted words to temper

Awkward lines preceding

Awkward pause awaiting

With wonder yet untold

Whisper with your petaled heart

Let go your pilgrim mien

Your errant wont

Let go the teeming tumult

Surrounding day’s seeming sense

Whisper from heart’s deepening well

The welcome draught that waits

Like burgeoning peony

Bowed beneath the weight of

Unbound breaking beauty

Blessed

There is only this

Stilling point...

In middle night

Amid darkened trunks

November leafless trees

You cannot see

 

When conversation deepens

Or falls to silence

 

When fragile bonds fire

Or sink to ash

 

When hearts hold fast

Or in bitter grief let go

 

Stilling point…

In middle night

 

When breath shortens

Or rattles deep

 

When steps fatigue

Or trip and fall

 

When memory dawns

Or dwindles dusk

 

Stilling point…

Amid darkened trunks

 

When hands derail

What eyes see

What mind hears

And in parody

Grow estranged

 

Stilling point…

November leafless trees

 

When handless

Chill of madness

Recoils in reach

To grip the pale

And slipping palm

Stilling point…

You cannot see

 

When tide recedes

Calming into

Shallow’s ebb

Pondering the

Residue

 

Stilling residue

As prayer

Lingering…

Barely marked

In middle night

Offering bleak and beautiful

Caught in mid-November dancing

Play of paling light and

Ever crescive shadow

Day draws dark

Words begin to fail

This deepening pitch

Offering bleak and beautiful

Left by my dog

Back porch by the door

Sky comes undone

Sun falls fleeing

Like November leaves

Rodent eyes

Fixed in fury of

Unrelenting fight

Jaws stretched

Teeth bared

Ready to lock onto

The dog already

Locked onto it

Mortal mask’s dire solitude

Gasping struggle fallen short

Sky comes undone

Yoga class years ago

Slow struggle into

Deep-stretch pigeon pose

Instructor lays light her hand

Fanned upon my shoulder

Reminding whisper

Do not to fall foolish prey

To unrelenting struggle

Defiant tendons bones joints

In bitter fight to find this

Deeply stretching pose

Give long exhale

The dying breath

Relax into the play

Stretching muscles joints

Let the pose find you

An offering

Left at my door

Dying breath

The long exhale

Already night blows chill breath

Across my nape offering

Hard solace as stretching jaws

Lock fast upon my pith and

Marrow like a debt past due

Dire solitude of

Struggle falling short

Drawing me into

Darkening play

This deepening stretch

May nearing strength

Lay light its guiding hand

Visit me with strengthened poise

As sky falls fleeing

Like November leaves

With dying breath

Let the pose find me