Spring appears in waves —
sea of curls return to play,
golden growls on blue.
Category Archives: poetry
Beneath It All
Love’s a hitchhiker,
so innocent in its leap
that it doesn’t register
torn seats or sunroofs
but simply hears
come on in
and feels that smile
like a warm winter breeze,
but relationships
are rarely so simple:
the car must be washed
repaired, replaced
and trips planned
and changed with the
frequency of newborns’
diapers amidst increasing
conflict till compromise
shatters
like a windshield at eighty
against a centennial oak
but love, love is not so
complicated—once stripped
of metal and fuel it
shimmers naked, senses
open to sky and skunk,
blizzards and vistas,
and it’s never
blind but radiant as a star
and enigmatic as a body
after the heart’s
final
beat.
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
Flying Raccoon-Angel Dog
It’s crazy how much I love this dog:
she’s silver strands if I am a crow
if a pirate, she’s my mountain of gold
by sea at night she’s the northern star
and my sun & moon & light near & far
(Joya picks up almost anything and turns it into a toy that she flips in the air, catches, chases, since everything is animate and joyful play in her world.)
wpc
Catalyst
As if disintegrating the stone of our being to sand
we pour ourselves empty to be remade beyond
the merciless sins we rise above.
The beauty of your breast now cleaved away,
my lungs always stomping their sun-flare dance against harm,
yet we reshape ourselves for one another as balm
till we can bear our stories’ terrible weight
till we are transformed as if sound—
water on granite, wind through pine,
an osprey’s haunting cry—
you and I as salt and sea and sky.
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
Poetry…
is just the shadow of the dog…
The dog is elsewhere, and constantly
on the move.
If Bird
You would be my loon
calling long past light,
my mourning dove, my
sweetest finch flashing
sun from black as night.
If my bird you were I’d
feed you nectar from my
palm and plant thick trees
for you to rest and nest until
I could transform my arms
and hands to feathered limbs—
our hearts remade as song.
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
Communion
Dividing an elementary class into
boys on one side
girls on the other
invites each to imagine one group’s got
cooties! cooties! cooties!
and vulnerable to those who thrive on power
yet united, we eliminate disease, produce
thriving meccas of cultural exchange,
launch ourselves through the universe…
so if you’re invulnerable to ads and rhetoric,
think about a lemon–
thrust your teeth through thick
yellow skin to release zest’s
zinging scent and swallow
tart
puckering
juice.
That saliva now beading your gums…
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
