#1
Sticky with need, hungered with longing
Speaking In Poetry: a potlatch of words/images
Ideas like pebbles tossed down a well
Just to hear the splash.
I once thought words built houses
Safe spaces wherein dwelling
Was of comfort & whole
Yet the wind whistles through verbs,
Rain washes away adjectives.
I am left holding only the idea
I thought writing would coalesce into love.
#2
And this is her fate:
The always of the clock
Hanging silent for one D battery…
Still right twice upon each whirling day
At Ingo’s, the clock runs backward
But offers no undoing
Simply reversing Time’s forward dance
Now the Mandela Effect
Of my soul’s Mandala steps forward
Running down my arm onto paper
The lanky outpour of a million years lived
A thousand years loved
A past of pens, a present of words
Writing.
#3
If words are a spell, I am deeply ensorcelled
Splayed on a pentagram of circles, stars & points to ponder.
If love is an event, I arrived just in time to take down the banner.
If heaven is a train, my watch put me past its departure.
I’m always arriving after the wards are set;
When time rests on its haunches
Always in between beginnings
Resounding climax dying away
The years haven’t softened me any
They washed off the pluff mud
Rending me to bare rock
Knuckled & craggy
Slapping back at the waters
Urgent & laughing,
Bent on uprooting me
To tumble downriver.
My footprint is a mantra
My pedigree soundly peasant
I am who I am that I am
Blessing & Muse & all that occurs
In that Between.
#4
Dumbledore’s Cauldron
I love the Pensieve
Where a wizard fishes out a single memory
From the mercury swarm afloat
Freeing if from fellows
All a-clamor for attention…
The memory, laid upon a towel to dry
Smelling of holy water & salt
Circling up with the prod of one fat finger
A stain of brine, a sharp cut of odor
A former place to be in the mind
Moved on to the present & far beyond.
I rest it upon my upper lip:
A clarion moment to inhale
Chill with wet suppositions –
Sodden strings of should/could/would/if
And just before it dries to sere
I flick it back to its pickling medium
It brightens, bubbles, swims away
A squirt of ink, an idea of smoke
Who will venture a guess who’s more free?
#5
I am a rogue mouthpiece for one small voice in the universe
An egg & a sperm penetrated long ago,
Perpetrated in a cosmic giggle
No longer in gravitas, simply gravid
Yet so fully lifted into life by the dreams of heaven
A breath of patchouli, of sage & ylang-ylang
A brilliant magnolia blossom, white on green-wax leaves
A ciliated, petalled moon.
I am a night-shadow, caught for a moment
In sweaty mystery.
The light of a false dawn, fading but a moment after.
Yet for all the ephemeral I find myself to be
There’s no doubt of my footprints
Crossing space-time, my spoor off the paths of heaven
Leading to those mountaintops, to the moment insubstantial
When I return to the memory of God
Who’s almost forgotten me,
“Oh, there you are! I just thought of you the other day, my dear!
I felt you all this time, you know, playing peekaboo on the trail.”
#6
These poems are running waters wearing me away
Rushing over grooves of white-salt runnels in rock
The years serve singled purpose: teaching me to fly
Oh yes, there will be a time
When laughter is my only memory:
The Holy Grail of life softened by a smile.
I have stalked the boundaries of heaven,
Drawn by a promise, a waft of pie-on-a-windowsill
A cool glass for an overheated soul to rest against
Taken by the view inside.
I am a vision, a shimmer in the corner of your eye
A snatch of bright song on an emptied-out day
A dip into perfume’s transitory promise
God has scraped His knuckles over me
I am bruised, imperfect, parts I started with now missing,
An angel touched down but for a moment but netted by gravity.
A breath of calm moisture on a searing hot day
I am the red shoes not dancing, the bare feet rejoicing; free.
Step out of your cities to my green velvet pastures
Allow the sun of my morning to break your frosted night,
Find in me that once-told joining of all you are to all you can be
Where you are born once again; born Holy.
Riding the Light 
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