Without Dark, Would We See the Light?
I think of lilies, flowers of the earth,
still fragrant, winsome,
each sight a bead in the chain of my belief,
though often times I toil
and spin and ponder, prune,
prevaricate in want and greed and guilt.
Category / Poetry
One Morning
In rough gravel
beneath a maple drape
beside a chance thistle
between the fallen
cones of pine
an orange poppy
its stem so fragile
barely wider
than a thread
drowses, sways.
Everyday Work
We’re spooled to unwind, like fishing line,
eager for a bite, the whirl of thread on spindle
rattling, measuring the length of life.
We race past the market’s crowd,
delighted in its hustle, though what we need
is a calm moment, to find a better stance.
After the Diagnosis
It was way past lunch time.
The husband pulled everyone
to the hospital cafeteria.“Cheap. Fast.”
“No!” stated the daughter.
So they went to a dim restaurant
and drank pomegranate martinis,
perhaps in celebration,
perhaps, despair.
Love’s Truck Stop
When we stop for gas in Bakersfield
I order a biscuit with sugar
but really, it’s a donut. Once a year
I allow myself this treat
and while it’s not the same as dancing,
I can recycle memories of youth
there amidst the glass case of crullers.
At the Zoo
At the zoo I saw a mole rat
in its glass-windowed burrow —
such tiny teeth — and when
it looked at me, two inches away,
and yawned, I was no longer
disappointed that the leopard
had slept in the shade camouflaged
by its perfect spots.
Where the Voices Took Her
Where the air people
build their flowery cities; where llamas
don’t have nasty habits but stare
out of their dark eyes;
where Shangri-La falls away in snowfields
and she slides down the white slopes,
The Way Home
Sometimes when I walk home on the road,
mist sits in the hills, dividing their dark green
from darker green. There’s the lake,
then hills and mist and hills and sky–
the white mist like a river floating sideways
up the hills, spread out in billows,
Doors
There are these doors
of generations. Some doors
are thin bridges, as Rabbi
Nachman says, plaintive
calls not to be afraid.
A Broken Meeting
When waited I,
To see your face
When stopped the time
My heartbeat’s pace
When I became a worthless bum
You did not come!