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Dig Me A Grave In The Air Dig me a grave in the air one day, so I won't have to lie in too cramped a way.

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A Message in the Stars

A Message in the Stars

The stars were out

shockingly clear and bright.

I couldn’t sleep, again,

as a bed is best kept for two things (not counting dying),

I slipped into clothes and went outside,

my dog curled up beside her, protecting.

It was an hour or two before first light,

a rare time here without clouds,

Venus rising in the East

like the Star of Africa on the paw of Leo.

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Raise your glass!

To this brief journey,

to this time-travel absurdity,

to the utter recklessness of our

joyful leap into the future;

to all the surprises and the pain…

To all the ironies, all injustice, all waste;

all mysteries, all loves, all heartbreak, all joy.

Drink some wine with me, in joy and sorrow.

Celebrate the temporary…Let go of what will not last…

Tast…

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Epiphany

I knew a guy. Cancer survivor, but worn down by it to the lacy bone. Thin, with a dry look. Still, a light shone through his parchment skin like a flame through a mica shade, like some kind of organic fire. The brush with death left a calling card. “I’ll be back” it said. “You won’t know when.”

He knew what it meant to nearly end. It was an epiphany, of sorts.

But there was this glow, as though h…

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Touching Glass in the Crowd

Touching Glass in the Crowd

The Earth burns and seas Simmer, choke, seethe, Smashing warnings Against the complacent, Flooding Sticky-tacky vanities of rich and poor alike With implacable indifference, Erasing intrusions in wilderness With mountainous, hideous Flames and heat and smoke. Hungry cougars flee into a plastic Melting suburbia ill-suited to A new reality.

But we still misread the moment.

As usual.

Like Pharaoh, One…

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What I Should Have Said to My Sons Sooner

What I Should Have Said to My Sons Sooner

  A father sees his son nearing manhood. What shall he tell that son? ‘Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.’ And this might stand him for the storms and serve him for humdrum monotony and guide him among sudden betrayals and tighten him for slack moments. ‘Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.’ And this too might serve him. Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed. The growth of a frail flower has…

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A Fierce, Terrible String Minute by minute year by year the tangled string of seconds girdled by fear of loss uncertainties desire joy, brief, hunger, sated, return eternally to drive us dissatisfied out again. The source of all suffering.

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I Am The Wind, I Bring News

I Am The Wind, I Bring News

It was always thus: The Father sun rises in the sky, the days lengthen, energy stirs the world.

I am born. And once born, I move. I must move.

My siblings and I sweep through bare branches, Laughing, whispering high and low through village And city and farm and water, We race and set power lines thrumming, push dead things Against fence rows, We sing along the high ridges and lift eagles Above…

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The Ticking of the Clock

The Ticking of the Clock

We sat by the fire

the old clock ticking on the mantlepiece.

You put your bare foot in my lap.

I was looking out the window, lost,

being moody, but

grounded by the gesture.

Later, I found you asleep, on your stomach,

Red curls across the pillow. I

breathed a silent, primal prayer,

and we moved together,

oblivious, as before.

When I woke, bewildered,

You faded the way dreams do,

all but the…

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If We Had More Time

If We Had More Time

Is there a lament more useless? If, if, if only… If wishes were horses, Then beggars would ride.

Only when it’s too late to do what should have been done all along. We breathe out, “If only there was more time…” The one thing we can be counted on to do on time.

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Diagnosis

Until this moment, I didn’t really know. I always thought “heartbreak” was a hotel Elvis sang about. Or a brunette named Linda, in some movie someplace. I don’t remember which one. She said she felt it.

I had no idea. The pain….

Until this moment… It’s really breaking. I can feel it twisting and writhing and coming apart in there. A sadness, deeper than space, spreads, and I don’t think I’ll ever…

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A Dog Has Died

A Dog Has Died

by Pablo Neruda

My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I’ll join him right there, but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any promised heaven in the sky for any human being, I believe in a heaven I’ll never enter. Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits…

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Raven

I once thought I had become so used to sorrow that I might never speak again.

I purged myself to a mute, perfect blackness, waiting just to give one last unhuman cry and fly away,

Anything to escape,  to  head for the far mountains and the headwaters,

To live the life of a scavenger and beggar, a medieval vagabond, always apart, feeding on the lives and hidden parts around me.

But letting…

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A Few Lines

“A good world— dew drops fall by ones, by twos.” Japanese poet Isa 1762-1826

Three lines tell all. Mountains, unchanged, ignore Temporary things, let The mist pass without notice.

One tardy fog-cloud Rushes up the valley, Chased by the sun. An old man stalks by On his daily trudge, Face set against the inevitable, Looks neither left, nor right. Alone now, girls used to play With his youthful body, Craving…

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Forgive the World But I was up before dawnWhen the tender last whisps of The time of dreams slides west,

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Long Walk

I won’t have power or fame. I won’t save the world. When I’m gone, my voice Will be the first thing people forget, As I did my father’s. It’s funny what you miss.

As the third child, I was always playing catch-up, The gap never closed, but I forgave this great injustice. I’m not ashamed of my defeat. It was foretold; It doesn’t matter.

Endurance comes only From enduring “Even asleep we partake in…

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Married to the Muse We know dark places,the things we daren't see. We learn, some of us, thatrunning away…