This is the sound of one voice.
One note
beyond music
shimmering like fire
in the darkest ghetto

What have we lost
to know
a brother, a husband
a friend
was needed elsewhere,

she cuts her feet on bones of the river
crimson pools on long glacial slide
of moss crusted boulders tipped
on broken pieces of themselves
teal ochre bronze bright bed of jewels

Start with bright colors

bold, black strokes.

Notice the eyes

on the blue side of hazel

Sweet dark graces me with grief

to mark the bits slipping into strange hands –

the champagne shades, the old chipped dresser,

the table with the children’s scars.

Buddha speaks
freedom, he says
as we bear him
from his nest
of spangles, batik, dark
Indonesian wood

Such a small box
to hold
the tall, solid bulk of you
bones and skin
your unbeating heart
conjured into fine gray ash
we sang a little

Dragonfly leaves behind
a random trail
in the dense pause
of an island afternoon,
spattering light through muddy reeds
flickering
through the rising of several suns

The palms on Ocean Avenue poke
the sky, swishing their clatter
against fat clouds, against pale stucco,
bleached out by salty neglect,
against the edge of this sleepy beach town
that no longer remembers itself.