Every so often,one of them leaves for the hospital.Maybe an ambulance rushes upand the uniformed guardians of lifego mechanically about the business;an old man’s face is taught,and a daughter can be heardweeping over the phone.Sometimes, instead, it is quiet voicesat 2:34 AM stepping softlytoward the car. Once in a while,a doctor says, “It’s a good…
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Walking the Thin Board
Sometimes you come to a narrow bridge.It’s a log, really, or a thin boardover a raging stream.You step out onto it.All around you, pressing in,is the agony of convention. You are responsible.You do as you must.It is a cold death enclosingaround you, pushing, forcing.And yet, that board is so thin.It flexes under your weight.Will it…
The Evening Rider
Something in the soft silencesoothes the soulful rider;darkness drapes the dew fallen leavesas he slips away into the night.While the trail is clearNo one knows where he came from,Nor where he goes.The dark shape shifts in the trees,Never changing, never the same.He moves through the forestSilent as the soaring eagle.His purpose unknown.His joy like a…
The Strange World of Climate Change
The light doesn’t normally die in the east, yet there she goes falling off the edge of the earth. The traffic all goes backwards; people disappear into their homes at 8 AM. The northern trees are dying while southern trees grow. Where southern trees disappear, there is grass. And grass gives way to desert. Have…
Four Swans and You
When four swans swept the south shore, Satan saddled back into his hole so love could flourish, its sound singing and ringing over the water, stillness soothing its own slow way. I saw those swans and thought of you; the white smile belying all I must know— the shine inside, the light beaming, one life…
Blackbirds at Dawn
In an apartment in St. Paul, a man stands in the window, looking east. Red rays and dawn’s rosy fingers spread across a sky whose message is nothing …but possibility. Black birds swirl in unison as if the undulating air were two lovers on which they rode; up and down, on and off… One can…
A Woman and The Eagles
The dawn is broken and you are up. There you sit, pajamas draped delicately on your body, the simple joy of your smile filling the cavern between us. We have yet to touch; perhaps we never will. All I have is to stand at this edge, call your name, and wait for the empty echo’s…
Spiritual Quest
I imagine you on a mountain top overlooking the ocean wondering how far a thought can swim, or even, why it would want to. Who am I? and What do I mean? You lean back against the tree, your spiritual antenna tuned to God, receiving messages from the Buddha’s great meditation. You thought they came…
Trump’s Washington
Black sand-swirls sweep up the siren sound of sanity; The dark king shrinks into the small hands loyalty offers. Why? Because the birds will not light, nor the cat crouch; cherry trees do not blossom, and children say the grass is not green. Only the loyal hands are steady; that’s because they have no eyes…