it's hard to write something beautiful
and lasting
in this fugitive time;

our allotted share on earth
with the world in disarray
that poetry can not set right

we no longer meet at the edge of morning
in this room full of the litter of every day,
we pass through
at different times, leave messages
on torn scraps of paper

following a ball
we threw in a park
a long time ago

the dawn does not hold direction
nor light playing in the leaves
nor stars in my western sky

names have been sponged one by one
from the slate of memory

and lately the headlines enter into my heart
like an assassin
my heart is torn, unknown
to itself

as the winter within
freezes my breath

who will listen to the wind
carrying my faint voice
into the years

i want to walk on the soft carpet
of summer nights,

even though i will hear the desolate bark
of little dogs,

i will still remember your laugh

i keep trying to speak
with this voice of rusted machinery.
dawn came cold this morning
stuck to flypaper clouds.
it's finally winter
and the flowers of memory wilt
in the spinning wind
brittle in rows
of damaged magnificence.

where was it, exactly, that
our legend began?  where and when?
was it in hallways that led between mountains?
was it on the edge of the skies of youth?
was it near where the river pirouettes
past the playground i wandered in as a child?

or was it at the very corner of a mountain
where hawks dropped out into space
and wrote our story on the empty blackboard
of the past?

what is love after all, but the language
that gives us wings,
the scenes, poems, and dreams
stored so long in the backrooms

of our hearts' natural imagery

bamboo bends in the wind
kissing the ground like a
lithe-hipped dancer.

maple trees cradle
their shadows where
the path down cold mountain

is overgrown with sumac
and other invasive species.
the moon climbed up the solstice

and is resting now with vishnu
on a cloud. last night's candle
is asleep in its wax tears--

leave-taking at its simplest.
growing up is hard, watching
offspring grow up--also hard.

if there is a guiding light from heaven
i believe it is the moon
in a poem that dreams

of the scurry of a fawn
in a house of ferns
by the river that flows without ceasing