Poetry

7/4/2016
Dog Days
On these dog days
beneath the haze
I can barely hear
the wordless voice
of the shy creature:

Stay with me.

The summer air is soupy
with memory and conflicting auspices.
The mouth quavers, anticipating
melons. The mind is lazy and eager
to be anywhere else.

Clouds form and chase …
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6/12/2016
Watermelon
How do we know
the presence of the Friend
draws near?
On a stump
at the edge of the field, someone
is opening a melon.
Every body knows.
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5/27/2016
Reunion
To greet you
in our reunion
I'd been saving
a moment
over a slow cup of tea,
but I gave it
to the cooling evening
before last.

The footsteps I'd take
when I saw you
at the fence, kissing
the ground with my toes,
not wanting to disturb
the moment …
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5/10/2016
Body
This is a step in my story
when the ragtag affiliation
of superheroes—willful, egoistic,
well-intentioned—must recognize
the extent of collateral damage
incurred during Act II
and somehow become
a Team, one one-willed saintly body.

Gathered from disparate lives:
The Conductor, self-appointed leader,
who keeps the trains
running on …
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4/19/2016
Peace, Part II
I don't know what you call
the opposite of a land mine
but I found another today.
I was cleaning
and I found a dusty jar of kohlrabi pickles
sealed in the summer just before the war.
I've kept these pickles a long time—
there were days
I wouldn't look …
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4/8/2016
For Spring
My prayer is to live
by this returning moment:
anger recognizes itself,
lays itself down
in a fresh bed
of cold soil,
gives itself back
to the original longing.
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4/5/2016
Found
Keep faith
if not always hope
with your heart and what it holds.
Follow in momentous footfalls
the way of your particular longing
until you find your lost beloved
bound up, tangled indelibly
in the world, her fragrance
found in everything
and everything found in her.

Where you recognize her …
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3/30/2016
Invitation
Lord, help me to pray
less. Help my gratitude grow
plainer, for smaller and commoner things.
Help my exaltations
dissolve into breath.
And by grace, may I make peace
where the shy wordless creature
can squeak his petitions—
small prayers for small moments
when I break off two squares of …
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3/20/2016
Batman
When Batman saved Gotham
having finally figured out
how to synthesize an antidote,
he couldn't go back to just being
Bruce Wayne—like most superheroes
Batman is maladjusted
for everyday life, maladapted
to a saved world.

When Noah touched solid ground
having preserved human- and animal-kind
and much too old …
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3/5/2016
Scars We Touch
How curious
how our deepest wounds,
transformed,
become scars we touch
to remember
who we are.
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3/3/2016
Leaving it Open
Forgiveness is not closure—
not the signing of a dotted line and a handshake
nor the drop of a gavel, Not Guilty,
nor the immediate restoration of trust.
Forgiveness is a door
reopened, blowing shut
in every storm, reopened—
a trail we open and offer
to climb together riddled
with …
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2/29/2016
Homemaking
I cleaned my house,
satisfied to leave it
locked tight and cold for a while,
but when I returned I found mice
had made themselves at home.
All the buried artifacts
I'd imagined undisturbed and waiting
had been skittered around,
pooped on, nested in, touched.
I wish the metaphor wasn't …
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