Into the Night

I went for a walk one night
this last week, my mind caught
up in that space between
hard facts and fickle feelings,
even though I know that
facts aren’t really hard nor
are feelings fickle.

I stopped for a moment at
that sweet spot between
two streetlights, that holy
place where I shadowed
in both directions equally:
the me-ahead mirroring
the me-behind.

I thought that this might be
a parable about life, or maybe
I sign I could divine in these
peculiar times. But in the end
I decided that this was simply
a strangely satisfying sight, which
might be what I most need as
I step into the night.

A Travel Guide for One

What a gift it is to
feel blood stream from
heart to hand to pen, now
staining this page with
my very being

I can hardly help myself
and yet I must since
no-one else can and
so after bleeding ink
on paper I practice
the augury of
ancient days.

I wind my way into
the labyrinth I am and
so finally settle into myself;
where I write a travel guide
for one.

Deep calls me deep

Lake Superior, near the Pictographs

 

This silver on blue – sun
kissing inland sea –
undoes me. My breath is
taken away like
air by flame and
I am oddly afloat.
What is this lake
doing?
It works
me profoundly:
deep calls me deep and
I feel its swells in
portending and subterranean
ways – waves of watching wash
me free from not-seeing
this sea, this greatest lake
that measures me:
I am found
wanting
more of it,
of its Maker.

Slip into Life

Write please write.
Push the pen until it bursts
solar flares on white;
bend it
until it leaks God
until it bleeds sky and soil.

Do not be content with
anything less than what
blinds you. Gaze
beyond your reach
waiting on shades to teach
your eyes your soul your fingertips
to feel for what is needed.

Sit
for a time
in the dark
and breath
rhythmically. In
your breath is
an echo of
death and
on hearing it
you slip
into
life.

Here and Aloft

Another summer has come
undone; with undue
hurry, harried clouds
rush autumn along.

I sit unsettled
by this season’s evaporation:
time’s rising like water
now made mist, the
ungraspable ever
more evasive yet
grasping me.

Even so, squirreled away nuts and seeds
remind me of my pantry and that I too
am both root and fog, both
here and aloft.

So Many Poems

So many poems, and

a good number of them

feral.

Refusing decorative decency, they

ravage good sense.

Sensually, they

awaken passion.

Raging, they

resurrect revolt.

Some of these poems

even evoke

silence.

Creek’s Side in December

Slipping over pebbled bed
liquid lauds.
With a patter perceived only by ears of faith
snow hymns.
Pine needles point beyond trunks true
to truth, and banks,
oh banks,
so snowy soft they escape description
describe mercy.
I can see my breath even while
breathless
because mine in this moment is Breath,
hallowed here at
creek’s side in December.