. Spinning .

The morning feeds the cynical
even as we shield it from the sun
with hands held up in hope
like leaves of the banana tree
wide, long, thick enough
to muffle shouting
into whispers
that, frail and fine,
disappear in dreams
of night’s proud stallions
and concepts made
of rock,
rough-faced cliffs, determined,
hard, against first light.

She walks on wind and leaves a footprint on the breeze that blows beneath my house. I wake and follow her, the trail like petals scattered round magnolia trees where only summer memory turns the silver branches back to blossom.

The day begins with a big yellow-toothed grin, snaps a branch off into a paintbrush, and strokes green leaves onto trees that cast doubt on the sidewalks still cold from the smothering night.

Laughter trills like water streams above the rock and mud of beds; love gets over itself. She shakes her hair back like she’s seen the models do; it’s not the same and yet for one fast beating of her heart, it works. She is young again, pre-love and in the atmosphere like rain.

Irrational Fears

Not born of sheltered privilege,
nor pearl abused by father, brother,
mustachioed hardened uncle,
or a mother pecked by a pelican
in her ninth month of bearing,
or borne by ghosts and grown
in rooms dark for lack of payment
for the light, or innocent delight
at warm and furry rats
jumping, playing games of tag
within the confines of her quilt,
but something, something left
a widget in her mind
of this: a very real and shaking fear
of melting in the rain

Thin of frame  and dancing feet and
slick yellow duck-like wear
protected her till she, a modern maid
laughed and yet stayed wary,
but there comes a time when luck
runs thin and thinner
to a trickle and a stop and catches
all the fears and flicks the sun off
in a flash and taken by surprise
the clouds mumble, race about
and lost, they hover, fold,
and cry–
yes, cry
in all the horrible
treachery of rain.

What could she do?
but bravely stood and faced it
shuddering within its cold embrace
felt its lover’s hands urge,
stimulate and beckon her,
bring her up to meet it
in a whirlwind wet and free
joyously she embraced it
turned her face up to the source
laughed at conquered danger as
on her tongue she caught
the silver drops of life
with head thrown back
in wanton ecstacy.

How could she have known
the cruelness of the darkest dreams
was not in the acknowledged power
but that of which
she had not thought, and
ere she could fully recognize
the true and tempting adversary
of all the years of dreaming

she had drowned.

How do you say goodbye in Spanish?
Seeking from the rolling r’s
a pillow for the words,
syllables that trill and spill
like petals falling
from a rose.

How do you say goodbye en español?
or for that matter,
French?

Bad relationships
are made of opposites
of nature

The way the sun
smiles shining on an
ice crystal

Who sparkles with
reflected love but
soon weeps

And lost in
Sun’s embrace,
disappears.

Strange,
for all the times
you watched the sky
cut by the flame of
engines
driving rockets
into space;

Worried,
since you had a hand
in it, and the men
who sat within
depended on you
to make
them fly,

Strange,
and sad, we watch
the sky cut by the ghost
of your ascension,
without the smoke
of rockets
you rise.

R.I.P

Wherefrom comes love?
On ballerina satin toes
or earthy lumberjack boots
dazzling as the snowflake
on a sunny day
or heated up to blaze
the forest black;

However is an answer
but the question still:
Wherefrom comes love?

To conceptualize
ponder
carve
the wheel,
not knowing that
it will take a man
to China.

Content
with ease of
burden,
speckled rocks
or
blood-fresh
pterodactyl.

Dreams
that go beyond
their maker
like
a glistening
spider web
or

A homely stalk
that stretches
grows
explodes
into a cloud
of fragrant
blossom

are best.

Aspirations in An Unknown Space

Fishnet-stockinged manatees
dance salsas in their dreams
while laughing dolphins flipper neatly 
through white clouds.

Sharks nest in the highest boughs 
of  weeping pine tree tips 
and lone tuna write their poems in caves  
by candlelight.

The hard earth trembles in the
footsteps of wide-eyed mice 
as an elephant sneaks through whispers 
soft as down.

Man carousels on Saturn's rings
and grabs for golden stars
to hoard in handled baskets wove of
string and time.

The stars, with broken egos, conspired
to plead their need to shine,
and so relenting, the woman swept
the clouds away and woke the sun.

"Safe voyage," I wished her
and green as her wings,
I envied the flash

of her flight

"I am not free as you,"
she replied in a whir
of a moment where she hung

like a kite in the sun

"For I am set north and south
by instinct," she said
"and you are unbound
by your mind."

Footfall louder than squirrel;
the hunter listens, waits
the aesthetic anticipates
sun-gold pelt in
hesitant steps
between the script
of leaves.

The farther that he fell from God the greater grew the need to tell a world he knew that didn’t know that he’d once woven wreaths from grapevine, pressed the fruit into a wine.  No one cared, he knew, of a little blue horse crocheted by loving hands to sleep beside him in the cradle. It would likely end as dust beside the broken wheels of bicycles and houses torn apart by another man’s machinery and ground beneath the teeth of giants eating earth.