my first Angels

I have listened to beautiful songs
played by symphonies of light and dark
seen colours born at dusk or dawn
come to thrill me...
I have seen kind brown eyes, and Love
with folded wings stood nearby, attending
love and fear

Life in many folds unrolled like waves
to a thirsty shore
Gifts in every breath and blink, a universe
boundless and the will to drink every drop
there are moments that simply overwhelm
the greatest gift that we can know
Here, it is gratitude
for blessings asked and given
and those i can only feel
when I remember my Mother's eyes
and the kisses wished by my first Angels

wheat field

In the time needed to bat an eye

You come and go; a perfume of a sigh

Touching skin in gentle furrows

Unknowing strands of your hair.

By sensation, a trace and image

Linger, so fleeting yet firm;

a memory made of fractioned time.

Convincing as any reality

I continue to see the glimmered

light and golden strands.

I think of wandering through a field

Ripe soft wheat expressing the winsome winds

Ahead, the blue sky frames edges of the trees

To making mounds and hills of leafy boughs

And to whistled brush of winds that speak

In a welcoming tongue, we run as if entranced

And footfalls make a dance of eager smiles.

Field’s end, we fall into moistened shade

And detect the laughter of a nearby brook

As body heat dissembles mossy ground into a bed,

I roll over to face full red lips;

 in a moment that cannot yet decide

Whether to bridge to ground or sky.

a cosmic watch

The wind gave life

To spots of dark and light-
brushed voices in the trees.

As the motion of distant stars

Turned the face of night

into a cosmic watch.

So little did time matter

and yet it was all, 

for in the sight of a petty man,

a speck within a mote;  

the bend of the world

bore a pregnant dawn.

Yet he too swims

in the eternal sea, 

flung on a vast tide beyond sight

imaginings and memory.

It was the wind

that made silence stir

and the lift of spirit

brought a prayer across

his ever expectant lips

waiting , waiting for fire 

and a blessing.

By the few…

Something unseen by the many, yet

always seen and deeply felt by the few,

has suddenly become all that everyone can see-

the killings of Black men by police violence in America.

It flashes like fire around the shrinking globe

like lightning unto an epiphany, so many can suddenly…see.

For the few it has meant a blood-boiling fury

that melts the rock of resistance , and thunders in the heart.

It inspires rebellions of thought that spew

Through the hard crust of the world; a fire

That mere reason cannot contain, for existence

Is the imperative of life, and in this brutality

the already flimsy filament of life

is a flickered candle in a ceaseless wind.

It is, after all, the lives of our children hung

In this balance; the cruel harvests on hard Ferguson streets

Or a tranquil park in Cleveland flowed

In unforgettable red in Baton Rouge…the red that leaves

Fire in the eyes and a cramp in the voice.

Now, suddenly, everyone can see,

Through eyes that swell to verge,

For It hurt no less in Dallas; it is life-

in all of its precious forms and fragility-

And it is a terrible thing to waste.

from Orlando

In a soundless place

Where there is no need for air

For nothing that needs breathe can be

is a place where nothing changes.

Where we see the shape of angel’s wings

splayed across the face

of an endless sea.

Lost where walls of galaxies appear to disappear

like specks and motes in a beam, found

like the gentle drop of a feather,

the greatness of the spirit accomplishes

that which  men and evil can never do.

In the birth of eternal knowledge,

an Angel drifted here…from Orlando

missing…the words

Through a window
 I catch the blue night-

The bluster of a mild wind

Shaking trees and bushes into a rush.

It was a mere pretense

Of colder times
when I would find a still patch of air

Embrace a pocket of warmth.

So glad to be held

In the moment of a stolen comfort.

So it was this way with you

Every moment seemed

Stillness in a rush of wind

A comfort I could not keep

And tender because I knew

It was like the words we pressed

Lips to ear; a tribute to a struggle to be

And be near, as breath shaped

The bridge we could never forget.

Now, they are missing…the words;

We gave life, the words that kept us in

One loving sentence

on the Avenue...

 

The sky was so high
the rain could not find me
It was lost in winds and windows
Stuck on cold glass and curious eyes
That counted drops into tiny streams
The tall buildings
Arched into prayer arms;

Thieves of blue and gray.
They shortened sight of day
And in the surprise of dusk
The steady plop of drops
Coursed through the dinner crowd
As feet lifted and fell into splash and spray.

The night lit so bright
In white and red neon light
That re-glistened off wet streets
And curbs bounded ambitious young streams.

I stood in doorways and tucked into
windowed bays, pretending to read menus
and sample tortes with my eyes.
It was then that hungers begin to form
an ache… I thought
this is the moment she would turn,
wet skin, soaked hair ends; she'd send
that certain smile. Her lips shaped
the kiss that cured hunger; one that turned
cold, empty thoughts into warm companions.