Doorway

One child closes every open door to maintain order

While another opens each one up while she’s exploring. 

There are a hundred different ways to spin a fact into a story

And the way you tell a child who she is and who she’s not

Becomes a threshold she must cross 

Before she sees that it’s a doorway. 

Balance

Balanced on a thin line 

Between presence and erasure,

There’s a face you cannot turn away from,

Eyes that still embrace you.

When the raven tops the maple tree

Whose yellow leaves are raining,

All your memories of amber light

Are loosened from their casings.

And the voice that calls insistently

May speak of love or danger 

As it draws you up and toward the things

You cannot look away from. 

Stereoscopic

At the door to my car in the parking garage

Four stories up in a concrete mirage

The church bells rang out thirty times as we kissed—

One for each day we’ve known all the years that we missed

Looking at you I can always see two

And they’re joined in the back of my mind where I’ve learned

That your depth is not something my eyes can observe

But like all profound things, it is only inferred 

Three Days

It’s only three days until I see you again.

That’s enough time for God to descend

To Hell and then come back again

Carrying silence that no soul can measure—

The space between words that holds them together.

It’s only three days until I see you again.

That’s enough time for these words to befriend

The silence in you that no soul can measure—

The space between us that holds us together.

Tension

Sometimes just a slant of light

An essence on the breeze

Can make you feel what freedom is,

But freedom’s not those things.

Love can be a bit like that—

A look, a thought, a dream

That points toward something so much more

Than what it really is.

Attention is what builds a bridge

Between this world and that.

A tension on the ropes that holds

The space between the slats.

Whither you go

Deep in your eyes I have glimpsed many rooms.

I will take off my shoes and I’ll follow you in

Though I don’t know the way 

Through the maze of your thoughts

To the place you’ve prepared,

I know you will come again and take my hand

And I hope that you know where you go I will follow. 

Graceful Bow

The golden light of autumn is too rich for earth to bear.
The trees rend all their garments as a symbol of despair.
Yet stately still they stand through winter,
Naked with a penitent shiver,

Knowing that a graceful bow against this
And that harsh wind will leave them standing
Still and tall on the first spring morning
When all of winter's quiet inner workings

Bring forth the first frail buds that burst
With all their longing for the summer sun they’ve heard of.
When back it comes to warm them,
They, like we, spread out their limbs like eager supplicants.