I am a lone bird wheeling jagged edges
of ancient cliffs above the shallows
of a rough Dover sea.
My feathers gleam in the beam of
the lighthouse where gentle swells
pulse against rocky shores
where in dreams you held me tenderly like
treasured pearls.
I have abandoned the lighthouse
that seems to lean closer to the sea
waiting in vain at the tide swept shore.
The beam has ceased its search
still each time I pass I tip my wing.
cover the sky with your hand
the summit of your palm is the moon.
Your fingers are streams of stardust
sweeping across ancient dunes
or the slender branches of willows
gliding through desert sand
soft and sediment.
Your words sting like bees that linger
thawing like ice on your tongue.
The heart of every woman you have
loved lives inside me
the cracking bones of beating wings
resounding against fixed walls
whispers of moments come and gone.
Recall my eyes as time,
you have lived here a thousand years
the dark sky of uncertainty.
Art from Getty
art by Victor Bauer
In the mist of dreams the touch of your skin is tinder igniting a flare becoming a flame. Your eyes seek out the savage in me. Here we are still lovers and like starving animals we devour each other with weak bites never completely consuming one another.
National Geographic
Nights while you sleep
my lips are so close I can
draw your breath in like an
infant at its mother’s breast.
I run my fingers down the curve
of your spine lean in to breathe
your smokey scent.
I have entered that golden part of you
immersed the sea that claimed me in
oceans of fiery sunsets.
When our hearts grow mute we will know
we have drifted too near the sun
art by Karol Bak
Browsing my journals
I am reminded of the past.
The door swings open
releasing sleek eels of memories
where I am nothing or at best
a trembling leaf caught in a spring breeze.
Do you ever think of me
find me in constellations pressed against the sky
or hear me in the sigh of an incoming tide?
I would seek comfort in the moon but I am
so trivial and he is taken by the stars.
In dreams my tongue is a crimson snake that
flicks hungrily along the length of your thigh
curling around the catch in my throat.
You are god and have named me regret.
I close our door with pried fingers.
I’ve given up on prayer hands.
Art by Rita Hardy
I can watch butterflies
float weightless over gardens
Stained glass collages of
amber rust and brown
set in facets of sable veins
they hover over flowers
compound eyes and fluttery feelers
faces smeared flaxen
too fine for the eye to see
Free from all fear
death is not a concept on
their mystical journey
If I am silent I can watch.
art by Nature Works
On a thorny stalk
wrapped in leafy veins
heavy with the burden
of viscous dew
for the love of light her
corolla lifts upright
a broad faced still life
anchored to the earth
she tracks the sun across
an unpredictable sky
At dusk she combs the air
with sweetness retreating
at twilight into
pearly pools of the moon.
photography by heart
Then, wisdom grew from fruit
and time was a seedling.
All creatures spoke the same,
hymn of bats, breath of horses.
We were winged and freedom
was etched on the soles of our feet.
Pathways in the earth and sky were
known not charted.
We stepped naked into the blazing sun
bared ourselves to golden rivers and
awesome tidal thunder.
