PICTURES: Stacking Book Poetry

Riding The Dragon

If you want to write
Sadder than water
The dispossessed
Night,
The book that changed my life,
Unfortunately, it was paradise.

Color

Pale horse, pale rider
The bluest eye
The stream & the Sapphire
Dispossessed.















Born To Kvetch

Sand in my bra,
The red thread,
The denial of death:
Love is a dog from hell,
War is a force that gives us meaning.
Smile at fear:
Death, be not proud.

Deep Community

The prosperous few and the restless many
The universe in a single atom,
The audacity of hope
Rising to common ground,
The life you can save.
Listening is an act of love.

Book of Longing

How much is enough?
Bird by bird
One small step can change your life.
Finding our fathers,
The namesake,
Going home.

POEM: Music Everywhere

I swear by the breeze
By which mosquitoes dance
There is music in the trees
In squirrel coughs & flapping leaves
In the evening mystery of bat-play
& in the hum of green midday.
In the family of birds that speak our names
In the gauzy light of a squint-eyed rising sun.

Let the walls of the Adirondacks shake with kinship.
Bond each one of you to the other
And then each to the woods & to misty mornings
& to the solitude of blue midnights
We rejoice that each to a person is a varied meter,
Each a different note of the same melody.

POEM: Pentacost

on the evening of that first day
when you left with dessicate hands
with corn-stalk hands

gripped tight onto what you knew
was left the drafty room, was your ghost. we saw
the flickering candle & lifeless eyes

nothing spoke as loud as what
was pushed through thin lips
steel-ruler lips,

coerced into a scar lying lips
brave words forced into a corner
this whimpering dog

me, seeking scraps of wisdom
fallen from the table.
air blew distended green curtains

of the room. you boarded
for unspoken places,
the latern dimmed & the flame inspired.

POEM: Looking Over One's Shoulder

After the tornadoes
can we ever trust the skies

again?

POEM: Valedictorian Address During A Spring Monsoon

from inside the old-church-
converted-to-a-theater
the valedictorian drones on
in gold-capped tones
staining everything like mustard.

outside, water toe-taps
sounds of life as
an IV mud drip.

then monsoon rains arrive
at first silent as an uninvited guest
but soon sounds pour in through slatted
stained glass windows.

we await the cliched
power outage but
somehow it never materializes.

only when it is done,
do scowling clouds remain
& everything wilts
with the intention
of drying flowers

save for the red faced
laughter of
fresh graduates.