a silent second

When you did not know
I would be watching,
and you had no idea that I
would ever see those moments
when your thoughts were far from me.
Your thoughts were filled by a room
of busy things and words, and your heart
took a silent second to your eyes.

When you did not know
I would see, the subtle curve
of your waist, leaning in, to
conversation that would matter less, later
and the slope of breasts to belt, in soft breaths
between sips, celebration and champagne
wet your smiling lips.

You had no thought of me and my steady gaze;
a photographer snapped you, looking away.
It brought you to me, so that I could enjoy
you, when you did not know, I could see, and smile
and love you so much more...

regret for Liberty

Imagine Liberty beneath the sea,

a daunting view of history; yet,
it was plain to those who foresaw

the predicted rise of the Atlantic thaw.

Her torch might only burn in glints of the sun,

in waterborne pollution, or dimly in
the craven rusts of a chemical-ed ocean;

 Oh! The great torch of Liberty
adorns cold-blood and mystery.

The warnings heeded by far too few, mindless

and those who slept genuinely knew, the sea grew

before the unbeliever’s too. Blindness

can be temporary or contrived,

for there were few if any that thrived  so much

as those whose Midas touch held black gold.

They grew not wise but simply bold, and

in legends that they retold, it was every one other

that stood in need of greater forgiveness—

but the deed has left us  with less, on a narrower strand,

dry land with deep  regret for Liberty,

lost and found ...beneath the sea.

caress a softer wind

I watched the sun splash and play

Rise up in joyful coronas and spray,

In the drips, the hardness of winter fades slowly away

It is only a moment in a welcomed warming day

But it seems so much more… as spirit rises to thank

The miracle that is always near, the star that loves us.

I stand in the gold and glow and know

there is the spring within that reaches out

to touch a beam, and caress a softer wind.

The eye leads the advance as falling waters

dance upon the snowless gray, and sidewalks

so ordinary raise heads like new green of the season

and we begin the slow shed of the little inward dread

of air too cool, and hints too cruel...now

the radiant sky has learned to paint an upturned smile.

Langston's Dream

Dreams connect a day that we have unto
A greater day we wish to be; the ties
that binds the heart of a wish
is faith in possibility.
For there is nothing that cannot be except
a thing we simply will not see.
As breath is beholden to the smallest will
So too is creation, for it is the path life fills
as time and love come to agree, one breath to another,
from this…to happiness

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.

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

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.