She
She touched me.
Her skin, tanned by moonlight.
Clean like a morning lake,
soft like a flowered hillside.
She kissed me.
Her face, textured by breezes.
Happy like a morning bird,
thoughtful like falling leaves.
She loved me.
Her eyes, lit by yellow sunlight.
Colored like an afternoon,
mellowed like an evening sun.
Leaving
Long before the winter came
the branches gave the leaves.
The summer gave the season rain,
autumn the season breeze.
November gave the wet days
that dripped from grey-black skies.
December gave the leaf-bare boughs
and the wind that faintly died,
then the dark and puffy clouds
that matched the sky for size.
The clouds gave the snow
that blanketed the ground.
The leaving of the birds gave
the winter’s silent sound.
Once
Once I wrote a poem
that sounded like the world
I want to live.
Once I felt the wind
between the clouds careening
and knew I was at home.
Once I had a moment
beneath the autumn/apple trees
when I knew creation was a circus
and God and I were brothers.
Once I sipped my life
as it bubbled over.
Now I only know the lingering taste.
At the River
From the mud with curiosity i saw
everyone in eagerness was racing
downstream to where the water
spawned into a river. There they thrashed
together in the current; then climbed
the waiting barges. Soon the flow
swept them to the delta
poured them to the sea.
i followed the brook upstream
until i found a mountain lake
guarded by some clouds.
it was rather lonely but
i liked it.
The Tinkling Sound
When I first stepped outside today
before afternoon had hardly begun
I heard a faint and tinkling sound
so strangely nearby I could not tell
from which direction it had come.
It wasn’t music I’d heard before.
It puzzled me. I stopped and sighed
A cricket’s whine? A coming shower?
Or was it bees buzzing among the flowers?
No, just the morning crying as it died.
The Tent
Pretend the stars are gone, the moon has froze away;
pretend night’s stiffened digits are rubbing on the flap;
hear the canvas bleating out its chilly, muted pleas
to our restless, cold-numbed bodies. Bodies awake/asleep
that dream of warming autumn hours in a cabin
before the crinkling, yellow fingers of the fire –
dream of our hugging ever warmer on the blanket
till the cabin dreamly darkens, and we tire.
Or dream half-sleeping of a lovers’ summer night
pillowed together on a drifting, sandy beach;
and feel the beating, beating, beating of each other’s heart –
then wake eternal to wonder where the coldness went.
Oh to be lovers in the warm, warm sand
while wrapped thick in blankets in a January tent!
