Shoreline: Words Like Sand

In Cloths of Heaven

On that day
at the fringes of time
when earth’s silk
has been spun in full
when the earth has been turned
a thousand times
beyond
 
I shall meet you
in cloths of heaven
 
We shall rest
shining
among such gardens rare
no fence unmended
a kiss exchanging
 
just once
 
for an orange sweet
in the whisperings
of weft and warp
your name on my breath
beneath chapel arches
a supper shared
 
in this windfall light
 
our alleluias
beginning
 
again
 

Mother, I Climbed

These stones remember
no primrose vows
only the carriage
of winters
spilt
into that summer of birches
trembling
with each rain
 
You and I
wearing
the river only
no servile kiss
the sun uncoiling
blush of pomegranate
 
You held out your hand
and I climbed
yes, mother, I climbed
into his arms
and went with him
 
to his house on the mountain
his stone house
where the waxwing sang
in cedared rafters

Mother, I Climbed was first published by Transcendent Zero Press, May 2022.

Beneath
 
the deep blows
of winter
 
the bent back
of the field
so long
 
remembering
wild flowers
 
Now, Now
spring draws
near
 
the field
cracking
brumal
 
ever warming
filled with light
 
whispering voices
brush of a holy kiss
 
In the furrows
dawn
 
of the next earth

So Long Remembering was first published in the Spring 2020 edition of Amethyst Review.

Doors Carelessly Left Ajar

The sunlight is spilling out of the trees
tumbling along with birdsong
bargaining with the wind
to carry it in all its blushing joy
over raucous rivers
through whistling mountain passes
to him 
where he may 
or may not be
but here
in my cotton brushed dreams
where he rests 
at his oaken desk, 
in his oaken chair

Birdsong tumbles 
out of my avian throat
my feathered heart pulsing
light
rushing 
hanging in the trees
as does my sorrow

If he is only a ghost
come from behind 
a door of my memory
carelessly left ajar

Time Indivisible

When the rain comes drumming
upon the summer roof of tin
drops numbering in the thousands
breezes begin unraveling
the curtain’s sash of rose
 
My body is undone,
inhibitions like torn buttons
falling unnumbered
to the floor
 
You weave
together the broken
hyacinth
casting
its healer’s fragrance across
our time—
and our time
is irrational
 
a number indivisible
threads of rain
hurtling on forever
into infinitude

Gossamer Words

You are the rhododendron
blooming in the deepest
hold of my winter
 
I recall your words
gossamer
graveled 
falling to my lavender pillow
 
how they still fall
down the echoing well
 
of decades
 
pebbles of remembrance
parting the air
as great drops of snow
outside my winter window
 
There have
been other voices
in other rooms
 
yet yours makes fine the memory
and unfathomable the loss

 An earlier version of Gossamer Words can be found in my chapbook, Remnant Day, published by Transcendent Zero Press, 2023.

I Must Go Down to the River

I must go down to the river,
to see the lofty verdant trees bending
over the cool, black water,
and hear some bass, leaping there,
the rightful owner of that place.
It is a true blue day of dreams
and chickadees calling to one another
concerning their own dreams,
I suppose, of the supper
to be had. But they worry not,
for all is provided. The unfortunate
insect, some seeds, a berry,
a veritable feast. May they never
go hungry. The river runs
smooth as an eel’s back,
with hardly a ripple. The sun floating
on the water glints off the silver
backs of the baby gar, gliding faster
thana breath. The turtles, hiding
in the clear blue air on rocks
and pieces from the old, rusted rail,
still as the voiceless moon
on the rise, its quietude portending
a time our voicelessness will cause
all to fall into silence, a feathered thing
that weeps.

I Must Go Down to the River can be found in my chapbook, Remnant Day, published by Transcendent Zero Press, 2023.
 

Maybinton: An Unforgetting
On a forgotten town

Raise My Head

Darkness too long 
upon me,
I must take its indigo 
shreds into my own
furrowing wind
and tear it away.
I’ve been afraid 
of the blackbird 
that crows every
swarthy fear into being.
Daily he waits
on the fence
for a fissure in my 
vulnerable strength.
The fear turns my 
crimson flow of blood
from rivers to rivalries.
He comes and seduces,
then cuts me down
beneath the earth.
Yet after all these years,
I can hear a thundering beneath
this red clay earth. 
It is the green fuse of life that 
shall not be broken.
And I shall raise my head,
yes, I shall raise my head,
for the Lord is coming
through the summer wood.

Simple Light

A Poem written on Easter Sunday in Isolation
after an essay by the Rev. Frank G. Honeycutt

I awakened in a simple light
that fell across my shadowed room,
the tormented rudiments that were there,
and their razor edges, now gone.
Now just a simple room,
with room enough for simple words:
Blessed be the Beloved,
who has been here, alive,
with lavender on his breath,
and I, I have touched the 
wound in his hand,
and this is how I knew him.
And this is a mark by which
you know me as well,
by my wounds,
my scars,
where I have been,
where I have died,
where I have been raised.
We see one another in a simple light,
the light of risen life,
as simple as the sun breaking over the tree line in the morning,
and settling down easy for a first Easter’s night.
LIke a fiddlehead fern I curl myself, and sleep in his wounds.
O Blessed be the Beloved.
Blessed be Christ.

After the Storm
On Easter Monday

I awoke to the wind
splitting the vernal air,
raging from the south,
the deep morning howling
like death in chains.
 
After it was over,
light was poured out
of a broken jar,
as is the most
precious balm,
 
I walked the yard
to see all that
had been broken.
 
Then I saw,
sturdily attached
to the limb of the
pin oak,
wound tight
with twigs,
some scrupulous
bird’s nest, 
bound round in
perfection.
It had been
stripped of nothing,
by the stalking wind,
not even one twig.
I peered deep
inside its
hollow dark cavern,
and saw that
it was empty,
the jealous darkness
telling a story of new life,
somewhere,
heart racing,
blazing in song
across our wearied sight.
 

And I Shall Never
On the ecology of disappearances

And I shall never hear your carol
raising up the trees of praise,
who yet in green veils of mourning
sigh, so remembering you,
O little warbler, whose voice sinks
deep, disappearing into the sod,
and floats soundless down the river
of unanswering sky.
Nowhere and everywhere,
such silence is cacophonous,
confounding the bereaved wail
of the evening loon,
a cry more yearning
than the great gray geese,
in search of home
upon mythic fields.
And I shall never,
with feathered fingers,
caress his awned cheek—
the thievery of taloned years! —
yet his absence lies with me,
in the secret bed,
withholding nothing.

The Overtaking

The winged nymph alights
upon her greenly stage,
the blossom, waiting, trembling
before her rapturous sage light,
the dance ekstasis
of creature and nectar.
Sing, then the butterfly,
though such sweetness
she gathers, she cannot hold
the unbearable center,
for that grace which may
yet alight upon us,
overtaking us in slow,
tidal swells.

Countries Yet to Come

I came to you,
full of a psalm offering,
but you had gone,
 
winged away
on some slant
of afternoon sun.
 
I tended you,
with my scorned heart,
feathered mercies
 
in the nested cave
of my paperbox,
the unrelenting Yes
 
spoken true
against the world’s
default of the lifeless No.
 
You were born,
not for nests,
but for skies,
 
and I am to live,
not as one dying,
but as one yet born,
 
again and again.
 
Set this heart of straw ablaze
and the cinders I will scatter
in flight across the steel gray lakes
 
of countries yet to come.