i will be content to make a meal
of bitter words
content with broken branches
and the echo of a storm
that swings between me and peace.

i will be content with darkness until
the dawn wets my face with dew.
i will learn to love the stones
that cover autumn's bare back
and the snow that drifts in my heart
through the long winter

until the ones i've lost
come back to me in dreams
with the stutter of memory
and the dazzle of stars
love will bless my steps
and heap a mountain of dirt on my grief.
i will believe the sayings of optimists,
soothsayers, and the prophet-like believers.

when a dream pecks my night with its beak
and winter is a whistling of snow,
i will use my father's cane,
my son's wheelchair,
and pray my mother's rosary,
i will stoke the embers burning in my heart

and be content with the little that is much

there is a fragile eggshell light.
blossoms are charring a thin black stem.
night rains are dribbling from sapling oaks.
summer unscrolls quickly toward the last red signature.
a woman loves a man until 2:00A.M. daylight savings time.
the heart is daily slain.
stained lips are breathing a white haze.
a television keeps cracking its voice over a blue stained carpet.
palm trees tear at a tin roof.
an accident is caused by gravity and hard science.
a woman's legs tease from the slit of a cheongsam.
a diamond went missing for twenty years.
something is round and toothless about a vintage doll.
these are the cold chambers my lover made.
there were four weeks of rain in a dream of swamps and drowning.
close the curtains on all fretting, ignorant sheets of light.
wind's poetry is translated by the leaves.
among the seaweed there are bits of driftwood like bones, white as teeth.
on an illuminated page the colorful edges take over.
two clouds splash like legs in a bathwater sky.
there is a blush on the air that a hummingbird recently occupied.
a piece of persephone's dress snagged on a shrub is left to the snow and wind

you might as well know
that i love you
and the sun and moon
are paired lamps
with dimming bulbs
lighting the robe-like cloth
of autumn

where the waves
of ancient legend
slumber, cold and still,
and your shadow has fallen
across my aging dreams,
calmer than all my thinking
more gentle than my philosophy
more obstinate and old

vague in the heights
an echo is calling
beyond the bitter smile
of the autumn leaves:
if you have no crutch,
then throw away your crutch.

the face of time
grows wrinkled
and a voice whispers: after the fourth season,
there will be no fifth, until
nimbly as a pair of butterflies,
we awaken from the wind

this august, the leaves and flowers

are growing in their usual splendor.
outside on the balcony, i set a little table
and tonight when i eat my supper there
i will gaze at the long meadow
and think of you.
you would have loved
this moment with its red hue
of evening clouds
and sweet rains advancing on the bay.
like your laugh, the water
in my blue-glazed pitcher
is silent and still.
a hawk's cry
soars sharply into the sky.
you and i have had to take
two different roads. but when i hear
that river rushing
down the distant mountain,
it comforts me to know
that even though i'm late
we are both destined
for the same eternal sea.

i miss you, son

a dreamless sleep was awakened
by the morning moon.  gazing through
a window with tattered curtains,
i could smell the scent of autumn on
the late summer wind.

the scent of ripe berries and the water
in the marshes are as faint as mist
being scattered by the western wind
before the chirping of the falling leaves.
ancient sadness gathered by the moon

is a migrant bird on a journey
past the autumn woods.
a bird that flies past the edge of the sky
into perpetual silence.
i sit by the window curtain
gazing beyond the treetops
at that lopsided mirror on the blue.

that rattling at midnight-- was it the moon?
the scent of moonlight and cedar
waft in through the window.
when i am gone, will my dreams
remain here?

strands of longing are the woven
cloth of dreams--a maple tree, its branches
caught on the clouds, a moment of rain,
and a small blue shadow
that has housed an uncommon courage
crossing a long ocean.

this is not the new world i had hoped for.
not the world you and i had imagined
in the churning quiet over breakfast
when we told each other our newlywed dreams--
those promises to always be together

have dissolved in the river
of tragedy smoothing itself
over all the surfaces of our hopes,
adorning our hearts
with the bugs and twigs of time,

filling our ears with the drowning echoes
of everything we left behind

the sky wraps its blue around
the trees. It's almost autumn
and the angels
have all gone south,
folding their wings so
they can finally sleep at night.

i have lavished my affections there
and in the northeast
and in the midwest,
not to mention california.

love spreads itself in widely
divergent directions--but like air
it can stretch a lot
before it breaks.

some things  are beautiful because
they will change with the passage of time,
and some because they never change;
but sometimes, the saw-toothed edges of regret
shred the pages of my calendar

and the weight of loss
compresses every moment
into what it is now, what it used to be,
and what it will become,

and the only way out
is to keep going through it

i was held by your voice and it gave me peace.
i never heard the passing clouds...inside my
chest there was a deep aquamarine sky
above a soft rose-peach horizon. i was a captive of
safety for the first time in my life.
my heart sighed at the wind's touch, knowing
your hands would be as gentle.

cell phones do not calculate distance-- so you
were always close, and there were times when
it was late and you whispered, close your eyes.
go to sleep.  dream of me.
i should have died then, when happiness
was perfect and dreams and moonlight were captured
in the black brig of night.

i was good to you.  so why bequeath me these
three months of an obsidian sun and a broken heart;
a partial eclipse of a full moon? why can't i get
through the doldrums of no-end and no-hope? my heart withers
and my mind is in fragments with no one to teach me now
how to ease into sleep, how to sail across this
endless ocean in a boat without wind or anchor

and dreams spooling out behind me

i don't have to tell you
how disappointing people can be.
son, you've seen it all...

and yet
sometimes the sun
comes back so
silently, so
naive
and tender.

in august, in spite of
goldenrod and loosestrife
in profusion,
the hills wait
for winter again.

real love is beyond charm
it is soundless at the core
honorable and unbreakable
only time and erosion
can tell its depth and sincerity,

nothing ever turned you from
the gift of loving.
not a wheelchair,
not people letting doors shut in your face,
not being robbed,
abandoned,
deceived.

you will always be
my beacon of light
reminding me that love is possible

dear son,
how shall i write you this letter to express the inexpressible?  you are gone,
but never gone. the sun has risen on a beautiful day. it promises
goodness beyond human affairs. it was a day just like this when we
scattered your ashes in the sea at World's End.
there were gulls crying.
there were clouds, scudding across -- but i cant remember
any sky.  the sky had lifted to a height beyond human eyes.
there was only a voyage into salt spray
ashes and water

and beyond the oceans of the world
beyond grief and despair

the shores of memory

your essence:

sonlight

truly a poem says nothing
of any use.  people never learn
from someone else's experience--at best
a poem makes you feel less alone

like a small bowl of peppermints,
steamed dumplings, or
a cup of hot coffee.

there is something passive-aggressive and toothless
about poems--they are silent and stubborn,
with eyes that are accusatory bruises.
always hungry, they are disillusioned arsonists
scattering gods and ashes everywhere,

a bowl of smoke.

but that is not where i meant to go with this one.

i wanted to say that there are memories
of moonlight pouring over the windowsill
as thighs showed themselves
to a face crying into its sleeve

and love was a sin spoken in a confessional
to a priest whose only desire was to judge .
poetic words were ashes falling on the random pages
of my life's tragi-comedy.

i will stop writing poetry.

if i hurry, if i really
get lucky, i may yet find

actual love