In songs
I play
the sound peaks.
Pizzicato
-the splash of a pebble
breaking the water’s surface-
then hide from the rushing
sounds
of swelling streams
where,
as in triumphant marches,
I reemerge
marcato –
thrust
and struck.
At the division
in the clouds,
she gathered the
late harvest,
as light
assembled and
comprehended
before the first frost,
waving at a point below
to handfuls of borne fruit
-not yet ripened.
Radiance jumped into the crevasse,
its purpose met
and bequeathed
to sequent moments.
All of my most
compelling photographs
have roads in them:
The lonely stretch of highway
to the left of a bittersweet sunset.
after the leaves have
all blown away.
The S-curve in a raceway,
-empty-
then full of revving vehicles
vying for the sweet spot in the turns,
to accelerate into the straightaway
that continues out of view.
The picturesque motorway,
that aligns directly with
an imposing palisade of rock and ice,
only to veer sharply
and begin mounting the range,
passing through the crags
to some apex.
The city’s avenue at dusk after
a spring shower, streetlights
glow off the pavement,
and tail lights pierce the
somberness
as if to punctuate
my transitory presence
in a moment.
A reminder
that I was there and moved on.
in the corner
where the buildings meet
is where the wind dives in
to swarm
and spiral in
a reel.
you only know that
because the tattered
blue plastic
jumps and skates
to the left
and the crumpled
kraft paper skitters away
to the right,
both fettered by an unpredictable swirl.
the one perfect thing
is the tumbleweed branch
pushed along
by this dervish
and goaded into rolling away.
In an extrusion
a mist of poems
read to the pink dusk
of September
-a pearlescent haze suspended-
before some fell like blooms
from a Rose of Sharon
– left to wane and decay with the days to bronze-
And some,
blossomed in full,
agape and yawning with nectar’s tumescence,
curled tightly in a twist,
a final coalescence suspended
there and left in her mind,
deliquescent.
When I left
my thoughts in the days
after
death,
as tic marks arose
like the blades of grass
-too numerous to count
and for their random stacking
could have buried
my understanding the
true
meaning of
resurrection-
beyond
reanimation of blood and
bone.
it is reinvention
of joy,
in the covered fields
that can be walked upon,
the horizons remote and straddling,
the light and dark places
that replace the terminus.
the tactile feel
when I drink
from a
red plastic cup
with vertical ridges-
waves that undulate at
my tracing fingertips.
and after a time-
combined with the condensate
colluded from
hot and cold-
I wipe clean the surface
and clasp my hands
tightly –
as if to shutter
the memory.
I’m having trouble
speaking the words of a poem –
with its slashing across lines-
led like the maestro, using a baton,
to encourage the violins
as they tear through the motif
of heroic melodies
it should resolve into
adagio songs-
except for the divertimento
in my head.
It is in the sounds
the leaves make when the breeze blows,
or in the solo song
of the catbird, after the wind dies.
There is a beginning, middle, and end-
to declare origin,
divine their pivot-
The end is always the absolute.
Recalling what came before-
She takes photographs-
framed with a delicate touch between
her thumb and forefinger
to record a point.
a reference to the during
where her moment breathes.
a yellow bird
recently flown from
a cage,
stopped at the end of the hall
to peck at the mirror,
looking for a friend
instead
finding a rival
at every move.
Taps and Ratamacues 