a timeless scribble

How is it that love comes
like waves and tides
rising because of the glory of the moon
and the waves
timeless scribbles of moving water
etched for only an indelible moment.

How is that that love rises like a fever,
simmers in silence, and quells
when she wanders...when distance admits
coolness.

How is it Love
we can cling to tenderness and yet
turn so quickly away to follow the flight
of a dancing butterfly; and

how is it Love--
that goodbye lingers wet on the lips
when the last evening breeze left
its dry kiss...so long ago

little wisdoms

A great forest of faith
green trees bend in winds, deep
roots from little wisdom's grow 

The seed within finds its way
to the sun, giver of all wont.
Yet we savor momentary wealth,
stealth and power-lust fill
such short days given.

Love and loss, the Janus-face
of the heart; the gifts we take;
ungrateful turns of eyes meant
to find beauty...drip,by drip we learn
fire burns but not so deeply as the thorn
near the rose of given care...

did i carelessly waste precious breath
did i spill the goblet of her given spirit

life has
a lash of many strings
but the deepest sting
is the stroke
of forgiveness

autumn hokku

on sharp stones
watching a snake shed skin...
we grow

autumn alchemy
the library's stone lions
become gold

river gazing...
a golden leaf becomes
my new canoe

morning chill...
an old red sweater
remembers me

autumn sunrise...
now the sun enters the house
through the lower panes

to interpret the day...

        unwind a day
Breath -weary moments remembered
weave us into webbed space,
a place of understanding.
Each sense-attached string connected to
the slightest shimmer of air

     unwind its brightness
Follows mute and gray,
coolness on face, as mornings seen
through eyes that see only me.
By a slight grip on falling sands,
time worn like a skin, I shed
an excess of self.

   unwind its purposes
There is food for a seed
the need to grow, reach for
a closer sense of the Sun.
It warms the cheek gently
yet brings near-fire to spirit
and roils currents... that lift wings

Mãe e sussurros ( Mother and whispers)

A vivid wander in the apse,  

an ancient cathedral breathes incense.

The moaned prayers for so many dead

re-echo and sound old pain anew.

How can we forget for a moment;

how does laughter yet rise from

the fullness of our quaking sides?

When the spirit-calls of emptiness--

of cloaked leavings, hidden 

in the silent roar of  grief--

rises like a quick flood in over-soaked ground.

It is always there, the want for those few

we miss in so many times.

Some scars close without healing

for we remember the deep rent and tear.

It phantoms to persist and exist

when we cannot do anything more

than close the sting in the eyes

love poem number 117

have I loved  as I love you?
the air brings  traces of memory
across lips and tongue...an emptiness, felt

in the wanderings of fingertips
the memories of skin, i close eyes
and bring you into a dream unfolding

and in the sounds you leave
an echoed grace, a feeling akin to weightlessness
that rises in notes of birds, in the forest's hum,
lays hidden in the ambiance of a busy street,
where we have walked,  and
made moonlight more tender


( i sight a solitary sparrow on a wire,
and urge him to fly...give wings to my wishes
for it is among sparrows on earth and stars in heaven
that I have learned a geometry of faith)


have i loved as i love you?
no- it is more that i never loved
until loved by you

a time of stones

We are bound to a time
tethered like an umbilical --
life is time in a womb.

I am found in a stream
heart- deep in this serum heat.
In a sudden swirl, spun left and right
losing sight of sky and sands;
I am closed-eyed, left to reel
in howls of side-swum souls.

Amid sharp pulls of swiftly-moving flow
left to see from-within and know
ignorance too has a place in the Sun.
When yearning for truth is undone
by passion to make hatreds into stone,
stones into walls, and walls into an age of stones.
When black-hole minds cheat the unborn day
and keep darkness within dread and shadow.

( in this dream my hand sets to ground
upon scorpion sting, back reclines
upon a viper's tooth, and in sounds of thunder
the night reveals her fiery wounds)

We are creatures of love and fear;
to foment ignorance, we too are Godly;
we can create a universe and dwell therein...forever.