Morning and America

It is morning in America

Because that is what comes after

An emptiness of stolen joy

In the night’s darkest hours.

Sown on winds of hope, now reap the whilrlwind 

a coming harvest from seeds of care

that fight and survive in fallow ground

Earth's sweet breath fouled by hatred.

Morning in America

Because the fiber of your being

Is resistant to destruction; though numbed by false sensation,

Will finally recoil from the temptation to wound

the weak ... simply because they are weaker

Morning, and the coming day

Holds promise of greatness

That the thin fabric and bare bones

Made by the sweat and tears of ancestors

Comes alive by the will of their prayers

To fulfill so many wishes for freedom

From the mean lash, and now to this day

It is freedom from a meaner lash of privilege

Morning and America, rising to a song of life

Precious beyond wealth, meaningful beyond measure;

it is the un-purchasable gift of a loving world.

It is Morning, when bleak darkness fades

To the rhythmic rise of an unstoppable tide;

The human spirit is not content to suffer

and rebellions seep through pores, as we

reach for the generosity of the Sun

The light of life has no favorite

leaves no one in shadow, it carries the spark

of creation;  it is we- connected, inseparably

in the image of something far greater, and

by Morning, it calls a day reckoned for justice

in the timeless want of the soul.

momentary butterfly

Perhaps every breath is an apology
for there is far more possibility than limits
my thoughts place...upon themselves;
truly in life, convinced of mortality,
I pause for mundane things.

I allow a sip of wine to dwell and occupy
the time a great novel might be born
I fantasize the passing buzz of a fly
to wonder if I could do more with a week of life
than irritate and vibrate.

I turn to the evening's menu, and the music
that will fill my ears and crawl into the seams of the walls
where once the music was a woman and song of passions
I think of the last and the next...and finally understand
love is the eternal strand of the momentary butterfly.

The epoch of a strife-less future could I have also
held forth like the vagrant millisecond-before
the Universe admitted the dimension of time.
The awful crawl of the hands on the clock
in the dream that comes like a mistral wind
when I was me and also he or she that I used to be
and knew I was losing and gaining myself.
A dream of birth and forgetting
and breath...without apology.





Inspired by:
Under One Small Star
by  Wislawa Szymborska  

Venus in the morning...

A grand view of the fall of stars
around the crest of dawn
and the velvet deeps play
into a crescendo of lightened blue
that ends in the fire of morning.

The journey of a day finds its way
across a hurried path into the east;
 first the eyes and then the heart
grabbed by a moment of lonely Venus...

Speak to me of love
as distant stars have faded, lost
in the wall of morning, yesterdays long-past
find voice in the mirage of coming light.
You who have seen the dawn of ages,
and death of epochs, each folded
into the edge of endless nights.

You, who have seen the fire of love
grow cold, and the ice of neglect
cover vacant hearts,
and known the point of longing
when the unspent purse grows thin
Rise to remind
that love is ever like the morning-
it is the peace of darkness, and the
matchstick  of a coming day.

dawn song

The music of dawn sets pen to dance

across a page and into memory; morning glance

and first light is a balm, a spiritual calm

and it sets us on a path for day,

as pillars of sunlight guide the way.

When we reach the edge of twilight.

and make the rituals of coming night,
a harvest of flight and gathered sight,
becomes a day in which we grew

by folding the old into the new.

pot shards

Drifted through yesterday
and the way I made-up many days past,
and reworked them to suit the new filter
placed over the distillation of time;

I drifted further, into the places
beyond the easy handles of yes and no.
Falling softly into places
where fears and loving make crossed currents
that pull me under.

Then I learn once again
to begin to breathe inside bubbles;
I find courage to renew
the birth-time notion to chew water,

and in this mix of twelve and six-
inverted hours and powerless to stop-
the urges that spring forth.

I stand in greater need of forgiveness
but there is no one here to absolve;
all are implicit and indebted-ly involved,
totally invested in the seamless dream.

When it is all done, and we enter
the lasting silence of sleep, then
life becomes the broken-pot shards;
the undisturbed dust surrounding them
make a picture...for the final cover.

steam ...

Lost in a thought- I'd borrowed
from her lips and eyes
and the mist from the tea
fills all I can see, a surround
and bound all presents

I drift into a moment before a kiss...
melting away, all the bustle
words they say sift through
a prism, and you are the anchor
upon this  softly rolling sea,
as mists, simply mystify....until

the room rises from fog
walls remove  sky, solidify
faces say who and why
skin tones reply  to my searching eyes
and I can only wish this momentary bliss
to stay...just this way

moon ascending

Into the night,
up into the bright, glowing face
golden moon ascending
rising from jealous trees
that keep you from me and give
faint stars-remnants of even greater age-
a dim and temporary stage.

I feign surprise, that so many wiser men
have said this too, it is something
in you,  a trust, a sensed confidence...
a wish to share that impels thought-laden breath
to bare wit and heart

If only I could keep one petal
of this bright flower near, vagrant
darkness would disappear;
I would finally hear the magic
in sounds of moonlit notes, and fallen
crystal spines of life

cosmic implication

When love seeps in,
in powers like air into skin,
every equation of human reckoning
changes...a constant
with cosmic implication.

Intrinsic as breath, subtle and hidden
as a state of  trance, yet the heart dances
to rhythms of another drum, resonates
to the thrum of other strings
when love seeps in... and it christens the world.

As if the wet kiss of clouds to earth,
touching all things, an equality of grace;
you are the dew on morning rose.
When love seeps in, it enfolds the world
and then I see the sun...and the glistened rose

teacups...

in my teacup...
finding long lost words
sounds of falling rain



raised teacup
wisps of steam

pausing at the lip

words I wished
into your eyes


at the table...
a mute conversation
breath in a teacup

my evening teacup...
stirring in the sweetness
soft cicada song



* three  hokku and  one tanka*

songbird

Amidst a sudden storm, in pause of wonder,

as lightning fades to soft echoes of thunder,

I hear the wind-filled trees in rustled whispers
through morning fog, the cawing crow call lingers

Where does the honeyed voice of love belong,

and does the silken songbird love the song?

Or does she rise to simply set it free...

As inner fires find bright melody

the final spark of want ignites to light

a moment, which spreads velvet wings to flight.

A deeper spirit bond won’t let her be,

But I think aloud...she is just like me;

A restless silence that could never stay,

 a searching heart that would never obey.

answers...

The singer asked a question
that was not in the song, but
whispered between the notes, carried
aloft on a flight of  silence;
then low soft tones raised the
search again, and the moment before
the moment after, when time
made fingers in wind-blown sand.

When the singer asked a question
that was not in the melody, but in a feeling
like falling sands,  to help us understand
that it is the  beautiful dreams -that need us-
to live.
Lost in every breath
is a spent moment, until  found in hope
and gleaming stars that remind
that everything  exists
because we do--painted by the same brush
that thrusts a vast array of galaxies-- we
are in the answers.

vacuum

Today could be ordinary,
tedium and minutiae, 
a day lost to the weary-ways of the world.
We can fall; 
be lulled into a mundane view
that life is only as it seems.

Then, as if by a chance more-than-chance,
a red cardinal song falls from nearby trees.
A draped willow fir catches a wind
and whispers a vague melody.
They fill my thoughts in sudden wonder
as if I'd been given a way to see
beneath the patina of the everyday
a wormhole to another side of the page.

It is this way when we love
the world is never enough.
For we know within each moment
there is an unfilled space...
and Love abhors a vacuum.