A GIFT
i gift wrapped a raindrop to send you
please don’t assume it is a tear.
it is a celebration.
the teardrops stay safe in the vaults of the eyes.
they are celebrations that wait to come true the next time I see you
and weep for joy.
LUPINE POEM
the lupines always remind me of childhood, i knew even then that i was growing up just to stay the same again. we all were,
my sister aching for the tragic and beautiful symphony of the city, graffiti walls of hurt and honest hearts,
my mother always in the company of the holy, every step toward heaven where the angels already know her name,
my father and his quiet life spent in the garden where the flowers know him best, always a boy in awe of the world
and it all turns to memories and those memories become my songs or my poetry and i wear them like a crown, those lupines, torches of youth.
SKETCHES OF WINTER #7
when it’s cold
everything slows down
your blood slows down
and your thoughts slow down
and the cars in the street all slow down
for fear of ice and injury.
when it’s cold
everything slows down
the icicles slow down and stop melting
they are the nose
of so many gone and invisible snowmen.
the exclamation points
on so many gone and dead ideas of youth spent in the winter.
when it’s cold
everything slows down
your blood slows down
and your thoughts slow down
and there is so much more time that is frozen and slowed
leaving no time to think of the future
but just time left to remember all those froze up memories
that thaw in that heart of yours
that heart that won’t slow down.
FIRST DAY GONE
Inevitable nights in Portland, the secrets around the corners and the mystery in the wide-eyed night, the gone, gone revelry of yesterday in snowdust Truckee, the stabs of love’s magnificent pain, the rooftop poetry and rhyme written in the ink bank, the children chasing pigeons in the park and me searching for animals long thought extinct…
Tossed around and lost in the streets of a million rains, proud and glory-struck! footstep songs on new sidewalks bruising the shadows of night in prayer… feeling infinitely ragged on earth but famous in heaven…
NOCTURNE #9
i imagine that when the sun sinks and the dust of the day finally settles to the ground
after you finish talking up into the sky and praying for everything you already have… but maybe just cannot see,
as people you love fall asleep in places that are far away from you
that once you finally fall asleep, the stars wonder where you go…
EASY POEM
Some days you wake up in the dark, when the light hasn’t been able to take hold of anything in the room just yet because the curtains are pulled together, still separating the outside daylight from the cold, soundless mystery of the leftover night inside…
and you shuffle to the window with yer eyes half shut and gently tug the curtain’s string, realizing it’s the easiest thing in the world, some days, to let the morning in…
HOMESICK POEM #174
i was in Mexico dreaming beyond the sad blank walls of a bus station dreaming of home — the distant snows and gone friends i dreamt the cool blue air walking along the water of Donner and i dreamt that funny tree… sitting up high on the hill
i lookt around the bus station and the yellowness in the air and the tired brown faces “what gloom!” i thought to be so far from home in the beautifully exhausting sadness of the world…
