As sticky as syrup-soaked gruel
eyes closed with dreamy leftovers
eyes closed tightly as if seamstresses
sewed those viscous visions inward.

You are cold,
to my palm,
to my cheek,
cold to my tongue.

Because my head is full of one hundred flowers.
Because dandelions were taken; ditto orchids
(each a bookend on the hardy-to-fragile spectrum).
Because I don’t compete with or covet the rich
and shallow soil but trade in the depths of mingled roots.

Lying amidst terra cotta
shards, in backyard rituals
we stared at a bleaching dot
of sun, hoped tanning might
remind us of no—bad—days. I told you

Home is a mold, that I cast upon you
in the shape of this poem, that fits only you.

Home was the way you described every color:
hunter green, sunset orange, and midnight blue.

When I was a child I went out to the long hedge
along the back of our property. I could crawl
in under the leaves and branches to the middle.

basking in the words
of a poem set aside, long forgotten
the warm glow of verses once familiar
comfort like a soothing bath
taking you back
to another time and place

I would wake and watch
from my bedroom window
as the snow fell in a waterfall of white
under the glow of the streetlight,
a suburban beacon shining
on my narrow side road.

Two days after the moon was full
I walked as in a dreaming.
Over the black seas I yearned to be,
Where the old stars were still bright and gleaming.

To drive past Coop City late on Saturday night
Is to see what the human worm can weave –
The coral towers stand out their lights against
The pitch-night Sound

The chrysalis comes in grey
matter, some lines of white
to tell the rest of me when
tearing starts.

She sways and watches the dark waters
Her lighthearted hums brings grief to the ears
Beautiful, piercing the silence of the night
Agony riveting like the pain of broken bones

Nothing, I see
But,
dandelion blush and smoky Bardot eyes of western wind. Nothing, but McDonalds and cluster flies…

Our time is asynchronous
We have a new favorite pharmacy
A ribbon-cutting you can’t miss! It’s
illegal
to feel

His footprints are still there to see
on the stone on the Mount of Olives
where he pushed off, like a power forward
rising to the rebound, to ascend.

time in hospitals is not linear.
the past and future lives of patients
dangle
by wires and rolling IV carts,
souls spread thin beneath bleached sheets.

When in the rainless weeks of summer the mulch pile dried,
and worms we hooked for bait would burrow
deeper than our reaching fingers could grope,
we’d sweep with bare feet the hay fields for grasshoppers…

Serenity before dawn’s waking human world disrupts pristine Creation. I and my companion share psalms we read aloud, a sacred veil ensuring inner peace. With opened hearts we rise as sparks in spans of history…

There are those who live
between the lines of life
who once were my story
but came not to fit,
not them in mine
nor me in theirs;

will we ever know ourselves as well
as we know the radish we pull from the garden bed?
know our readiness as its, as it bulges at the surface dirt
with rusty shoulders that promise spicy delight?

A paper Burger King Crown,
Lunch with mom in the park,

She adjusts it over and over,
But it never fits right upon your head.

When I arrived home from the hospital,
there was a gift box at my doorstep
from my daughter, who recently moved away.

the winter-bare forsythia is so many
arrows of neglect, bundled;
the light, quilted, a question.

Skin stippled with drops from the emerald canopy
quietly content with the other,
no need to speak over
the rustling soundtrack of ironwood sway.