Chrysanthemums

I follow your voice , the delicious promise of adventure, you are there beside the river that breaks on the slippery rocks .
You pull me to the edge, see what I’ve found. I peer into the rusty water , translucent in the bright sunlight, they stare back. They are always waiting for us. Do they see us I ask , you nod your head and toss a chrysanthemum into their memorialized liquid form that wobbles in circles spreading out and away from us, yet solid in togetherness, in softness, turning their backs to us as we walk away.

night life

translucent opal, the moon casts its haze across the water.   I listen to the  rhythmic rise and fall of waves against the seawall.  
Those  creatures beneath the depths,  do they sleep, dream?  If they are  parted do they grieve?  Further down the line I can see neon lights blinking at the all night store.  A man leans against the counter.  Cautiously he  slips his hand inside his jacket pocket and takes a long swig from a bottle.

  A group of young thugs gather outside the storefront.   I imagine them  harming the oblivious storekeeper.  Distracted by the young whore taking shelter in a doorway across the way they laugh and whisper. Oblivious to her vulnerability she sleeps as though she has never heard of  birds of prey that swoop down with jagged talons hungry for butchery.   I watch anxiously in case I need to call out a warning. Losing interest they disappear into the darkness and once again I can breathe.

Perhaps all that I see and  hear is illusion.   I lose focus on the  outside world and the burn of your memory stings just below the surface.   I want to sleep forever, not give a damn about  you.

Estuary of Flowers

In Memoriam …

I step back from the light

into the dark.

On the beach

I want to fly but fall like

a silent prayer.

My limbs are  an anchor

as I slip beneath the surface.

Once grasping  palms lie flat

as gentle waves rock me.

Seaweed strands of hair mingle

with the sigh of my breath.

I grasp the hands of my

companions,

my only thing of value.

Everything beautiful is here,

all that was lost.

Birds chorus to the stones that

mark the  resting place of a

thousand warriors   in an

estuary of flowers.

A tribute to Trent, he will be missed🕊️

JOY

Desperate Garden

Near daybreak my mind steps down

into our most  beloved poem…

“I meet my shadow in the deepening shade …In a dark time the eye begins to see,
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

In an ancient  garden

a raven sits motionless on the skeletal 

limb of a tree. Greedily he eyes

a tiny lark, all feathers and bone.

In this state between sleep and wake

I traverse birth and mortality. 

A faint hint of earthy candles haunts

my celestial dreaming.

Sensations of  pearls like tiny moons

slip through the fingers of my open palm.

And you,  whose sigh is a strophe

of sonnets, wait at the boundary,

not spirit or  rose tinged snow

but flesh, sinew, and bone.

 I am sleeping less,

roused by the wing beat of Boreal Owls

that circle ancient Cypress.

Their screech a fist  with knife edge

talons erupt through feathery curtains

breaching my seclusion.

Traces of recollections vibrate

my hemisphere as lofty breezes

lift me,  a spectral mist, vanishing

over the valley to a moonlit hillside

of sweet lea.

An ivory wolf lies down beside me.

He is the scent of golden wheat and

his eyes are the color of the eastern sky.

*In A Dark Time by Roethke (Stanza 1)

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood–
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. 

in remembrance

The chicklets are sending love to what used to be america, in a three minute silent rememberance.

Healing Scars

I’ve freed us

like  ocean winds.

Unveiled dark  secrets

hidden in shadowy corners,

forced them into the light

like   fine bones of birds .

I’ve erased every memory that 

 ached beneath my ribs . 

My heart is the  blush of peony,

the color of healing scars.

Get a front seat at the fashion show- we’ll be looking for you.

THE FASHION SHOW…

Happy Halloween 👻

sensors

Pleasure sensors release in our brain as vicariously we watch unfamiliar faces , vessels of desire, vanish into scenarios of empty promises , impassive eyes , whose hearts roam the darkness searching for secret hideaways in dimly light alcoves where a rosebud and candle light reflect in their eyes. 
Briefly memories come rushing back but our hours  have vanished as quickly as the smoke from the cigarette you  held between your lips as I struck the match. Now we wonder at the mere existence of survivors of that moment when the cusp of an orange moon sheds its fleeting light through a misty window. 

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Edgar Allen Poe