1 New Poem

Songbirds

If I go first,
in the next life,
as a sparrow,
I’ll wake you with songs;

Our love will be simple then,
no more ink-black stains
of deep feeling to clutter
the picture, no more
shattering shouts to break
the silence of summer hours.

We’d still have distance,
but sharpened points would
be gone, just the echo
of sweet language unheard.

I could only touch you from
afar, see you through
windows and wires, an apparition
of what we shared once;

It was a mess
of glass, blood, sweat, spit, tears,
hacking screams in dark,

Before we moved to our new
places,

Before I could love you
perfect, through air

With songs in morning light.

1 New Poem

Evenings & Weekends

One day, all our
bookshelves will be organized,
our basement won’t have rats,
the water won’t collect at
odd angles to the foundation.

One day, the tree limbs
will reach in a riotous tangle
to god above the sky,
not cower in a broken form,
from the slice of blades.

One day, hearts will not
be so mineral, I will
cast light from every piece
of skin I have to shine
against the coming gray.

One day, we’ll cast off our coats,
dance free in rain, snow,
places hidden from glare
of great ills, the blistering
peace that chills an arid land.

One night, when things come alive,
the sparkling illusion leaves space
for withering love, toughened by
the silence of years, passed
between us, unnoticed in their grace.

1 New Poem

 4:27PM, Thursday

I am thrumming with the possible:
pangs of protest, violence,
stomach stirring;

As I sit with echoes
(bannerman in shadow),
knowing our songs

Will all be silence,
forms made anew,
reassembled to journey,

Electric against sky,
waves breaking beach,
wearing the sand

Smooth and broken,
polished for a danse
macabre, dizzy with strength.

****

There was a before,
there will be an after,
there is a now between,

That I live in,
with all possible things:
coursing currents

In my piece of time.

1 New Poem

Dishes

I used to wash plates

at the restaurant

my high school crush’s

grandparents owned, just

off the main street

in a little town with a

waterfront boardwalk

and a high school

on either side.

I’d scrape the leftovers into

a big plastic trash bin,

line cups, glasses, bowls

up against each other,

let the steam come

up over me, and wait.

Watching waiters bustle,

through narrow kitchen bends,

watching rain fall through back alley gutters,

watching summers come to an end.

I used to wash cutlery

in the sink of an apartment

that tilted to one side,

so that water would run

at odd angles, staining the

chipped countertops, pooling

underneath my roommate’s ashtray,

ruining his Zip papers.

Watching days trace into mist,

watching the in-out procession of friends,

watching absurd relationships take flight from couches,

watching dreams come into being.

I wash the glasses while

looking through a window

that turns to the sunny side

of the street, ringed by

houseplant leaves and the

Simpsons ornament my

wife bought two Christmases ago.

I listen for the sound of

pattering dog paws, as

I soak my hands in sudwater,

splendor of the suburb sunset

falling on the kitchen mat

at my feet.

Watching children play on concrete,

watching for a day’s relief in eyes,

watching the time wind rush by us

watching my heart's love wound.

1 New Poem

Song for Those Gone

I’ve heard it said
some things lost are never to be found,
but all things must return:

new forms and shades,
new shapes and names.

In dreams, you flutter on air,
butterfly wings too soon silenced,
taken under tow of time and weight,
too beautiful to be born.

We imagined you
speaking in schoolyard codes,
pitter-patter of nervous foot on floor,
tasting the first berries of summer.

But, maybe, you’ll come
as a rainbow
a sunbeam
a songbird
a shading tree.

Something that holds only joys
for you held nothing dark of
the world, nothing to spoil
from becoming all you could.

But you were all you could be:

Ours,
loved,
all seconds we shared.

1 New Poem

 Blankets (Stardust)

When you were born,
shivering,
you already held,
everyone you could have
given to the world,

the same as your mother,
and hers before;
all hoops joined in chain,

I see when I watch
the women with exhausted,
purple eyes, falling asleep
on their husbands’ shoulders,

under the digital readouts on
healthy eating in the first trimester,
billing costs for reserve scans.

The same as when
I hold you,
glacial,
I hold all the ghosts
of troubled teenage nights,

that wash away,
against light of
next thousand lifetimes,
we hold together.

1 New Poem

 Moon Cycles

Often, in silent times, I think
of trees and death, and how
they are the same:

Circular, replenished, endless,
taking, growing in kind,

Set between plastic places
that echo art that tastes
of bitter ash, bootleg cigarettes,

Back to the spring from which
all things flow.

I think, “why the Garden,
why plants, rocks, sunlight, rain,
why things so small hold joys?”

They are circles,
reminders of home.