Passing,
always watching
from outside-
it’s dark and alone
and night where I stand
looking at a frame
all aglow
and inside is a family
huddled like
long ago in a bunker
with rations and news radio
though it’s 2016 and the news is fake,
trickling into their pores via HD television…
I don’t see their faces
but the tv shadows and reflections
on the wall
look huge like puppet masters,
training these people
to laugh and cry on cue.

Grab hold of a hill-full of fog and the morning slips away
like the hours alone on the rusty screeching swing,
back and forth until loss of shadow reminds us
to take bread and eat for that keeps our bodies pushing through
this space, all green and succulent even when buried
beneath a controlled burn (if the spirit can weather such a thing).

An open hole to sing from is the same place for stuffing bad things,
but what comes out may be beautiful, like how we love
is always more than how we fear and touch is a gift not meant to last…
A rush of migratory birds makes us forget whatever prayer
we were repeating and for a moment we pretend to have direction too,
a place to belong that exists only in moving air.

I tried singing
but the moon
took it away
to rest on a night wing,
and that’s where
the best dreams
will have to go.

A single, singular leaf
swirling against sunlight
into meditation beyond a blue day
brings her to an edge – forgotten
but not misplaced as she had thought,
straying on purpose while awake.

The trick, she knows, when awake
is to free-fall like an autumn leaf
without worry, without thought,
welcoming rain just as sunlight.
Hiding in the arbor is not forgotten
climbing, ignoring fresh bruises of this day.

Dreams of night melt into day
as early morning birds scream “awake!”
Terrors of past darkness are best forgotten
like the shedding a tired leaf.
Even as the moon craves sunlight,
she reaches for warm embrace of thought.

Do birds carry any thought
than stretching across the day,
drinking rain, singing praise, bowing to sunlight?
As on wings, her spirit becomes awake.
Does a bird ever long to dance with a leaf,
spinning until time is forgotten?

No child’s dream stays forgotten,
not the glorious, not the darkest thought.
She wishes she could place her hurt on a leaf
and let it wither to feed another day.
The strongest fears while awake
are lost in forest’s dappled sunlight.

She is a branch in sunlight
but with roots and stories forgotten,
nothing to haunt her while awake.
The freedom of such thought
brings yearning for a different day
like an unfurling of joy upon a leaf.

Time is aware of fading sunlight.
As the tree frees a leaf, sorrow is forgotten
and thought becomes hope within a green day.

You think everything I say is lush
and promising today
because it is unseasonably warm
with a wild and heady wind
blowing from the west-
farther west
than we have ever been.

Beware the illusion
of floating roses in moonlight-
my toes firmly grip soil
even as I reach for you;
there is no navigating a spinning moon.