PHOSPHORIMENTAL

You will feel my presence again one day
in some timeless, placeless place
Maybe walking your dog through neighboring fields
with the morning sun warming your face,

its rays painting copper in your tresses,
released in the whispering breeze
At first just a trace, then you’ll follow its voice
a soft rush in swaying trees

What do you see in that wistful gaze,
with those honey brown almond eyes
Is it someone’s bright star over the horizon
aglow in the dawn’s blushing sky?

There is always a breathtaking turning point
in the courses of rivers and roads
How curious we are of a mystery unfurling
in the unopened bud of a rose

It’s like dwelling in the hearts of those we meet
as we cross through the arc of time
Spiraling, circling, sinuous paths,
all the while, love traces a line

You’re my Northern Lights that appeared too soon,
or perhaps I arrived too late
But I’ll faithfully accept one more chance
To complete this promise I’ll make…

…That as our journey’s meander
through the remaining paths we take
across the breezy fields of a cinnamon dusk:
if there’s a trace of me left, then I’ll happily wait
– for a time-tested chance at us.

tis nothing if not heard

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#25wtT, a series (each stanza, 25 words)

This night,
we parliament of owls,
perched in boughs;
ones who find comfort
within the forest of those
who love us,
nest, thorn and rose.

Each morning I look for You in the east
as the forest looks toward the mill
wondering about stories to
be written on its pages.

Gather around,
the desert has become a garden.
The grapes are full again.
The master has dissolved into the plexus of his poetry.
So listen.

Between eyes and vistas are wind,
water and light.
True meaning hides within nature,
beyond touch, sound, and sight.
And all who behold – its archetype.

No longer amused by memories carried,
guided along familiar tracks,
satchel emptied, light in my step,
and the warmth of the sun on my back.

tis nothing if not heard

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photo by https://www.pexels.com/@anuj-yadav-34803963/

tis nothing if not heard

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Today’s dusk cooled down bigly
after last night’s torrential rains and wind. I imagine
that she drives by as I’m sitting on the hood of my car,
imagining the Amazon,
listening to the trill of a Musician Wren.

In a quantum instant connection
every line I could imagine
rolls off my tongue.
Shyness vanishing, like night clouds
over the edge of town.
The guards have left their posts
while our armaments were down.

But the fabric of time ripples
to the winds of “might have been’s,”
…which still may never.
For we cannot disrupt a promise
owed to another — for the price
of a “goodbye” again.

I write anonymously into the ether
in hopes I am read by anon.
Words like bright lanterns seeking love, which
also cast love’s shadows,
onto a reluctant realist — a poetic con.
The deeper I search, I follow myself
over waterfalls, into the mysteries of the Amazon.

A dear friend is one who can fill in the blanks
of the stories we try to tell—
the exaggerated truths,
the travelogues of journey’s not taken,
and the lies we try to dispel.

tis nothing if not heard

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In repose by firelight
juniper needles crushed, scented
under sublime weight
of autumn. Tresses
softening across her shoulders.
Now spring,
these extinguished coals
barely smolder.

One tent peg remains, a soldier
plunged in thawing ground
Last carnival truck tail lights leaving town
disappear behind a column of sadness.
Vanishing with a distant sigh,
writing opposite to her winter equinox,
it will summer by the time this message arrives.

Love is a black glove
forging gilded arrows
launched in the bent bow of a sentence,
Its taught strings drawn with tension,
couplets released, crossing the sky
To each shaft,
a note is tied
stained with tears a heart has cried.

Silence is a remedy for the wounds of love,
As a lover’s arrow comes and goes
This mad astronomy
of two stars gazing,
Through constellations in repose
Your summer flower has leaned into my winter frost.
Everything is changing, yet

Seasons have no meaning
on the equator,
There is a stark still repose in the garden
Dusk and dawn dip and rise
about the circadian fulcrum
The moon in zenith pulls the tides
The heart is a ship at rest in a sea of motion.
Teetering along the seam of time.


(the final version of this poem appears in publication https://www.centerforinterfaithrelations.org/poetry/winners/season-on-the-equator/)

Epilogue (the following were stay notes in building this poem):

A tale of two childhoods,
eons and worlds apart. We sit,
Alone with the same campfire in our eyes,
two beings in repose
at twilight
The holly berries redden,
In a warm rain,
even a wish knows,
everything is change.

We ships cross divides
of time and space
Say little more than a gentle word
Caught in the catch of a sail.
We pass, our trailing wakes combine,
Then fade away.

We cannot speak,
as we choke on withheld words
Each heart a rose wrapped
in thorns
Each sigh casts a scent
that leaves us torn.
#25wtT

tis nothing if not heard

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I promised…I know… but only the sun
rises for certain each day.
If I stay away too long,
will her smile wander from my memory?

What about the Seine in autumn,
a place I’ve never seen?
Whoever we are, I think, is defined
by the places we have never been,

defined in the glowing silhouettes
of those we’ve yet to meet.
We’re running through the rain,
splashing puddles with our feet,

losing each other in Union Station,
rushing toward different trains.
Tomorrow, maybe I’ll say something.
We’ll see. I guess it all depends.

I promised… I know…
but if I stay away too long,
whose face would I light up
just by walking into the room?

And by whose glowing gaze
would my own face be lit,
until I could finally see
something of myself defined within it?

She is still undefined, reclined
in the passenger seat,
the windows down, wind all around
her eyes gently closed, but not asleep,

her smile’s sublime curls,
frame sunlight on her face. I can see
her in the truck’s side mirror.
I imagine she is thinking of me.

And for one passing moment,
with the road unspooling behind,
all the places we have never been
begin to feel defined.

tis nothing if not heard

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I’ve sailed over the waters of melancholy eyes,
My fishing lines dragging off the stern.
My heart has a hole in its pocket I am told
And it’s empty as a vacant urn –

So spare the heart of this landless Mariner
With still so much to be learned.

I once saw the promise of a beautiful life
In the sadness of a black and white photograph.
My heart has a hole in the bottom of its pocket,
Where the ring slipped through
Off the bride of the past –

While tracing the immortality in our epitaph.

In a dream we are throw away lovers,
Who wake up when the children are grown.
My heart has a hole it’s pocket I’m told,
And we wonder where the lost years have gone –

The only cure for too much is more,
So I’m writing this letter to anon.

tis nothing if not heard

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I strolled into a comedy, a romance,
A midnight mind fog, in a twilight trance.
I thought I heard a sad ending unfold
in my opening line. And then
a sunburst over the horizon.
And the frons turned their faces.

I muttered an apology
For an unpreventable distraction, and
In an ordinary moment of radical transparency,
I said it. “I’m sorry, you’re distracting me.”
And we smiled at the flattery.

Everything aligned to create
Another impossibility.
We listened to the ocean in a shell,
To it’s arriving waves, rolling gently
Onto quiet shores.
This is us as we were meant to be.

We watched the tides pull away,
Taking us back,
Way back. Into the future,
When we knew each other
In unknowable ways.

Had this never been explained to us?
We never thought to ask.
Way back, way back, into the future
Where we’ll share each other’s past.
And find that only the present lasts.

tis nothing if not heard

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Oh, friends
I was quick, too quick,
to return to the grind of occupational habit

so that here in the mainland of shit
every smile I see curl,
every cold beverage that’s raised,
is a reminder that

for a time,
amidst the troughs of this grind,
we took a lease on tracts of sand and ocean,
the azure dome and the fresh green fronds,
the swells of emotion

We were tipsy
We were carefree
The sun rose and set,
teetering drunk on time,
maundering,
stumbling
under a oven sky

We toasted our glasses, and
with each page we turned,
each one a farewell
to the tyranny of
the grind

The grist of our nature
churned in a blender
papaya, melon, cigars, vodka
the spray of friendship
from the twist of the rind.

tis nothing if not heard

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Grazed by the sun’s last glance at dusk.
A red wine droplet on the table cloth
spreads quietly,
a small scar left by the thorn reminds me…
even when the vase is empty,
there is still a rose in the garden.

It is anguishing to wonder if
you were also waiting,
wondering if you should reach for my hand
on that stormy indigo night.
It never happened.

Love can be the slow burn of ‘not having,’
Akin to the last light
of the waning amber glow in the wax,
a gray wisp from the extinguished wick.
Recollection of unrequited love is
the striking of a wet match in the wind.

You were curiously touching the grape leaves,
standing on a hillside in Domaso.
You had your back to me.
Beyond you, Lake Como. Beyond that,
the Alps.
And beyond that,
the end of a love story that never begins.

I attempted many unfinished poems
spellbound by honeyed eyes.
Walking between the rows of terracotta roofs,
on cobble streets, I authored us in my mind,
bending truth
in the forge of a heart set afire.

Whatever you looked at,
you saw it differently than others,
like Da Vinci saw the Vitruvian Man.
Like whenever I looked at you, how you became
an ever intriguing stranger,
familiar, yet always new.

Beauty is a view from the window
of two passing trains,
a boundless countryside
interrupted by the flash of another’s face.
The entrancing visage of a companion
who slipped into the void between light and sound.

Quietly, our time came and went
barely noticeable, faintly traceable…
like the seasons changing in a small town.

tis nothing if not heard

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