Dedicated with love and respect to Lois Keffer – writer, editor, friend, mentor

Pound for pound these words say less than they mean

and weigh more than they say.

Pull away every other petal and one still gets half a flower;

a down payment for the coming Spring

when the world doesn’t mind repetition

for the sake of simple beauties, multiplied.

Is that where you stood

that morning when the sheath’d, embarrassed moon

hid herself too soon behind earth’s broad shoulder?

Inured to tenderness but not without skiff and shuffle

you never made it your way to sing

past noon when the capricious cool lay waiting

for her summons from the heat of shimmering day.

Why must the geese shout so loud,

parading their brash story, torn through the ashen sky?

Their mockery only makes you braver

to twist your weary neck from shifting dirt;

the clumping, clodden landscape,

your only refuge.

You turn for home and take your place

among the pawns of potential.

Eat enough to remind yourself

of Eden’s meta-narrative, your textbook

with pages missing, the ones you planted.

Only here do you hear,

the song of dust, the foreplay of longitudinal seed-smithing.

Despite your doubt, here it makes sense.

Here it doubles up to surrender

the deep bellies of earth.

Dedicated to the 26 sweet souls whose tears, now dried, fears now abated, pain now gone and thirst now assuaged can rest tucked in the bosom of God. From our vantage of dark remembrance and empty ache we remember you. We remember you.

I saw you today.

You wiped your nose on the new sweater Grandma made for you.

I saw you today

picking up the rabbit by her ears a little too rough. When she scratched your arm you cried.

I saw you today

fighting with your sister over the last of the McDonald’s fries, a Happy Meal’s empty promise.

I saw you today

playing with the other kids in the nasty ball pit that smelled suspiciously like pee and bleach.

I saw you today

crying over losing your Auntie Doris’s broach you had silently stolen from Mom’s bureau.

I saw you today

yelling at your brother to stop bouncing you so hard on the see-saw.

I saw you today

at your piano recital. You played a piece from “Chopin for Kids.”

I saw you today

through the window as you were coloring something. You chewed on your tongue.

I saw you today

as the school nurse dried your tears while applying the bandage to your wounded shin.

It’s Saturday,

I didn’t see you today.

Photo courtesy of www.funtasianyc.com

like lead on paper the tactile scratch

of winter rakes her rusty back

dusting each day for fingerprints

our only hint that somewhere near

she hides. like water in the well

down under, below within

where the moist and rich grows

before making its appearance, sacheting

across a dark-soiled stage where

dirt crawls up her dress and

spreads her limbs, surrounds her cracking skin,

pushing until she explodes in climax of more

but for now, shivering haunches huddle

encased in dead and dying promises

night and dark have outwrestled

her brighter self, denying ascension

in her tomb of untouched virginity

she longs in unrequited passion

and, donning the satin sash of evening,

the smoky grey of night blows her tender kiss

to the shameless, bright day

and whispers, “adieu.”

See this and other cool photos at www.fiercefragile.com

As latent potential erodes, your beauty housed in forgotten containers,

the violin without the bow, the harp without the strings,

you’ve stopped yearning.

When your name no longer gets written in dusty chalk on the blackboard

but caught in the foamy ridges of someone elses’ brush,

you’ve stopped befriending.

To get lost no more side by side with immature friends

crashing through the forest in less than suitable attire,

you’ve forgotten irrationality.

When your daily adventures look less like indentured servitude

and more like poetic phrases and the gentle turning of notes,

you’ve started seeing.

How strange, these words, so still and pale, lined up so straight

like lexical dancers intent on a single thing:

to bounce their lettered beauty into the naked world.

Lines, vigorous or drowsy or ambiguous poke and prod and woo some response.

Delight or Joy?

Curiosity or Fear?

Anger or Pity?

The words trip and whirl, spit and spew, thrust and weave

engrossing the reader in the perfect, nuanced phrase –

that opens the door.

I love cemeteries. They are not sad places for me. To the contrary, they remind me that those brave souls whose lives already possess both numbers, the prefix and suffix of the dash on lives well-lived, tell now a bigger story. I am strangely comforted that their passing has in some small way prepared me for mine. I am at peace in such places.

Crunching beneath my feet these leaves, left forgotten to rot and blow and weep,

gather in huddled piles, victims of their own deep fall from heights above to this forgotten place.

Their one-time glory now lies like hazy remembrances flattened and pressed into the soles of strangers’ boots.

Sometimes, when dry enough, they leave this parallel prison to drift and swirl and dance among these stones

that stand so still like soldiers, their only medals the printing on their chest

of this one or that one, the dash between numbers the only hint of where once they dwelt.

The sun’s cool brightness mocks the quiet of this place of silenced voices –

men too weak to risk, women too weak to love, children robbed of both.

Still, something about this grey, ponderous place, draped in Fall’s finest filigree

urges me on in this sweet reconnaissance, this date with mystery, undying.

And, while still standing on the shoulders of those who have spoken these same things,

the specter of risen spirits breaks ranks with the melancholy oaks and sings out a new song,

not of memory washed and sanitized, protected against itself,

but embraced in the sweet androgyny of death.

You may find the beautiful photo here.