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.
 

Pull—

I know you did not see me then—

Your eyes were missing in the dream.

I only knew that it was you

Because your soul still felt the same.

You did not see me and you slipped

Into a trade wind like a ship

To ride the spinning ocean gyre. 

Sometimes knowing certain truths

Creates an irresistible pull—

I understand because I know you—

A tender conscience in a world

That speaks a different tongue—

Where people think they’re something other

Than the thoughts they entertain,

And then they think no one can see

What they are made of— 

But I digress—

You did not see me and you slipped

Into a trade wind like a ship

To ride the spinning ocean gyre. 

Sometimes knowing certain truths

Creates an irresistible pull— 

Seized

When a soul is seized by a moment of mirth

It contracts to a point every timeline

That spins through its middle, and we’re

Bent double with laughter,

We can’t breathe, we’re after

That moment

When nothing else matters. 

It scatters—

Like people do when the music ends—

It’s like time bends and pretends 

It is the infinite— or worse—

That it succeeds it.

Melody

Years fade like mirages on the edges

Of the autumn afternoon 

That feels like summer still at 2

But not at 7.

There is a strange small turning inwardly—

An instinct tugging at the soul—

Perhaps the same one that tells the birds,

“It’s time to go now, time to go.”

Does that song know us too?

Spent

 

Have more fear of death than life

For life unlived breeds fear of death,

And of death you have nought to fear 

For life, in living, has its end. 

I Cannot Love You As You Are

I cannot love you as you are

Any more than I can a star

Whose light crosses the galaxy 

Along with many others.

But I can love you as a song that,

Through my open window found

That both my walls and I 

Fit somehow in the sound.

Hallways

When I walk in the door and decide where to go,

I wonder which version of you I will find—

It may be the one with your hands like a cup

Or I may have to find where you’ve wrapped yourself up

So securely, I can’t even feel you.

Or maybe it’s me who becomes different things

When I leave all my shadows behind

To dance out of sight to the music

That hangs in the hallways of your mind.

The Voyage Out

I saved you a seat 

At the back of the room

In my mind where I sit 

And look out at the world.

While the floor is quite nice,

I’ve removed all the walls.

We come and we go now

Whenever we please,

Along with the sunshine

And shadows and breezes.

You can talk if you want,

Or if you want to, just be.

And at night I’ll stand guard

While you learn how to fall asleep.

And in your dreams you’ll voyage out

To get lost on the angry seas

And I’ll be like Penelope 

Who makes her love a tapestry

Late August leaves its bookmark in

The edges of the forest where,

Before the dusk has nestled in,

The last of summer’s light retreats

And cannot write the understory. 

Each season has a start and end,

But seasons haven’t any—

And so it is each time our souls

Embark upon their journeys.

And in your dreams you’ll voyage out

To get lost on the angry seas

And I’ll be like Penelope 

Who makes her love a tapestry