Sunday, January 31, 2016

uncovered winter

 
  

The sun claims a day
when calendars shiver and leech
poorer expectations; the sun rules.
Inside the glass and steel contain
moving through traffic, there are amusements
in the mites and specks that dance along bright beams

Remebering the feeling,  moments as a child
in the sunny grip of cold air; it was
so strange to feel the sun on my skin
and a chill in my core. I wondered
how to get the chill to rise
and warmth to sink into happiness.

For that lost and lonely moment,
found again as when helpless children
wince and accept; the sun claims a day.
Uncovered winter folds a page of spring
when we would flinch because a passing cloud
has temporarily stolen our joy.

Friday, January 22, 2016

The Minora has a flame



 


Fold away a selfish piece
of a sullen day; the rising crescendo
of baneful and needful ways
Rings loud and true  and caught
In the mind’s  mirror.

Trapped between ancient mercury and beveled plates
Where artisans gave lives to art
The fatal darkness into mouth from fingertips
When ignorance was far more costly than the jewels they made.

A dizzying whirl of clocks of another world
Timepieces of pained selectivity, art and guile
In gold and precious mattes shaped by will
And the even eyes of an older world

The Minora has a flame and a heart
on this day I listen to its beat and sense the warmth
when words make a flow, and a bridge
from this day unto that, when breath came
in an agony, a spill of life blotted by unwilling earth
when the ground was an accomplice and the air
held smoke of sacrifice, and the last eyes of the martyrs.



I visited an Holocaust Museum in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. I was treated to a personal, guided tour for which I am and will be eternally grateful. At this remarkable place, I saw a collection of artifacts that were like treasures; they held memories and vital proofs of an eventful and sad time. It was an era that defined humanity, it carved itself into a wall of stone forever. I was moved and saddened, but discovered, there is a certain joy in holding these memories. They are things of lives that simply must not be forgotten…hdm



Monday, January 4, 2016

a dream of life

There is another conversation that we must have Dear...
it is about you and the way you come and go.
AS you come~

The way you breathe life
into dull and unfeeling words,
there is a bit of god in you
the last time we had
an increment to this talk, we left it
a bit weepy and glad for moments shared.
As if an obligation to grab a piece of fleeting time
and hold it to a greater beam than the brilliant sun
or glows more delicate than the pale heart of the moon,
it was the light of understanding.

So quiet here now, in the place reserved for the next word;
so still that I can hear the breath of bitter winds
and hear crows in frozen fog on the edge of a Russian winter
and i must tell you, there is an ache in the East.
Peace and reason fly like flurries of morning snow
doubts dot roofs that came with the Soviet fist.
A durable blue Orthodox glimmers to the slow turn of tomorrow
Faith is still here in  thoughts that curl and rehearse
like steam and smoky  vapors.
They are such un-confident actors, afraid
they will not impress when we know
there is no greater measure than truth, no gaudier robe
than honesty...and no place to hide a tear.


and AS you go~


Today, as I see your deep river eyes
as the wells of mine grow shallow, and
glaze over; frozen by helplessness in reveal
when time chases us, and we heel like humble sheep
no way to keep the guise of self-direction.
It nips and barks until the chill air of living winter
bites deeper than we knew, and takes pieces.

We float at the will of wind and wave and all else
that plays the greater gravity; it is as if we sink
beneath the skin of the sea
where so many things flash hot and see coldly,
so many toothed and fanged fates await

did I tell you...

the beauty the words made
when you asked, and I answered with such earnest ways
my eyebrows raised in effort. I scratched the covers
of virgin pages and made such lyrical noises-
worms in the dawn face the coming of hungry birds and drying sun
how day became the end of a dream of life... and here,


I speak again, I am the spider ready to spin
and it is far from dawn, three AM and
the world still divides by half, and again...

Sweet poetry, thy name may be
a brief breath and slight memory
when signed among the wall of stars,
but in the brief flame carried upon the human frame
the filament bears the intense burn of the spirit
and I think the light goes on and on.


It seems so odd to say good bye, when what is needed
is a comfortable chair for a deep , and satisfied smile;
In a fond thought of the sea
that keeps so much until it surrenders all in time
and it strands the leavings of epochs gone before.
There is rest upon altars of wet sand; and the ruins
of earlier times meet the curiosity of this day.
The sleeping things awaken to a new place in the sun
and the awful moment of taking comes undone.
There is naught but the sands, words blessed upon winds,
and the eternal tides.

Friday, January 1, 2016

ever present chance

Laughter can flow and fall into air
seeming vapor and mists, in my mind's eye
it is a cascade among elegant cliffs and trees-
an already beautiful scene, made more beautiful.
Laughter gathers into mighty streams
and collects to grow and carve to sea
like deep rivers, it carries much along the way.

Tonight, I look into the eyes, across lives
and over generations; I see
the gifts of mother to child and child to
fresh springs of human spirit that
the world so badly needs.
For it is tears of time, that wets seeds
that sprout full-blown into possibility.
In boundless and deep forests it covers vast tracts,
 fills all emptiness, and make the ever present chance
that sweet breath inhaled  becomes
laughter on tireless wings.