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.