a chilly evening bites at my shadow's heels
and commandeers my peace of mind like a pirate.
sunset is the trees' tongue
twirling the sky to be swallowed
plunging a rebellious moon
into the autumn pool outside my window.

i have no heart anymore for drownings.
love binds me tightly to the one
who will soon be leaving.    it's a big
world out there where memory and tragedy
spread through my dreams with a history
too heavy to imagine, thickening my heart.

my first son never made it home from the sea
but his life hasn't stopped sailing...
his hope and faith slowly make their way
up the tangled rigging on the mast of time,
one determined foot
after another.  i wake each day anew
with his indefatigable courage
calling like a gull at my window...

we must learn to hold them close,
only to let them go.      it's just that
somewhere along the way
i misplaced my own journey...
out of the earth
a morning glory bursts, pierces my left sole,
shoots up bone and rib
to the broken heart it stitches.

words and memories--
all the good things my hands have touched
are greedy for anything that lasts,
and confused by the evident: nothing lasts but change.
i wish that i could take it all,
pour it into shadows of light
and keep it in a box

where we could all live together again in peace

when there is nothing,
wishful thinking becomes our story..
reality is born out of wishful thinking
in the same way
that the surrounding world
imitates a small, empty room.

when we are alone
nothing exists but our illusions
we live inside an empty head
and our lives chafe against our shoulders
like shabby clothes.

poetry is a mirage
tinnitus ringing in the ears
a sound born out of the void
a land of extinct volcanoes--
scar and ash, sea and stone,
where we stand on a tiny piece of
platform that still remains--
half a step more, and there is nothing.

echoes shake the walls
like an empty sleeve that trembles...
what difference does it make
whether our time together is real or unreal?
if someone living is forgotten,
how is it that they are forgotten again after death?

if someone living is forgotten
they are locked outside the entirety of yesterday
plummeting into the vacuum
that is today