Without Reason

(2010 Pushcart nomination from Joyful!)

Because in the midst of a rainstorm
a tree can be halved by lightning
and spare one survivor between Heaven
and home, and sometimes water

can flow from the tub, seep though
a floor of another man’s ceiling
who’s thankful for rain when his
dwelling is parched, and because

speech is occasionally slurred from
the onset of illness rather than gin
proven by doctors in search of a cure
and sometimes a woman will die

in childbirth before the infant is placed
on her belly, for the joy of life
and being a mother. Because of this
I’ll write you a poem, imagine you

reading this hodgepodge of lines,
with a need for hope and hands raised
high, for the craving of fingers wrap
around fingers, connecting souls

in a manmade steeple. Because
of this I’ll write you a poem and a poem
and a poem, until we know all that we
don’t; until we embrace all that we aren’t,

until we are in awe of the universe
and forever united within these words.

Breakfast in Winter

Celestial Soul
(Breakfast in Winter)

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
─ John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have seen the sunlight softened through
your eyes of monarch wings and lilac-space─
a photograph, the reverie that you
once knew; obsession filled with grace
deprived of years and countless clichéd things
yet feverish beyond the breadth of stars
that outline Heaven’s glory, legend rings
like Romulus the deity of Mars.
It was your picture I admired most
your godlike face, so unafraid to die
a Pentecost and you the holy ghost
with resurrection blessed amid the sky
enmeshed in moving clouds of whitely hue
that dip at dawn to share one glimpse of you.

Tindeck Audio: Angel reading Nine.mp3

There is a House

(Object of Desire)

There is the house where children used to play
and laughed upon a swing that swung
behind the neighbor’s fence.
Was it not the place that held a memory,
of you and I or maybe only me?

It’s pink, that house that holds a banyan tree,
where flooded streets once bled canoes
upon their gravel tops
like hungry shores, yet a simple place
each number marked where station wagons parked.

Abandoned when you left it back in time,
now hollowed eyes, its windows never see.
There’s no light that warms the glass
no gathered drape against the frosty chill
an entrance beckoned, now it never will.

Oh how I wish to let that old house know.
The one where all the children used to go
they’d march around the benched lanai,
blowing horns at bees who lost their wings
from pulling strings through trees. It was I

who lived there very long ago. Pink house,
don’t you remember when I slept inside
saying prayers each night until I cried?
Was it not that place that held a memory
of you and I or maybe only me?

Pockets Full of You

(I'm Packing Things for Heaven)
For my mother

If you left me in the Springtime
Then the birds would halt their song
Quelling singing while you’re leaving
To signify how wrong,

If you left me in the Summer
Oh the rivers wouldn’t roll,
With all pebbles parched for moisture
From the babble that you stole.

If you left me in the Autumn
When the leaves begin to turn,
They would stop their color changing
Till the year you might return.

If you left me in the Winter
Then the rain would never fall
For a protest from the Heavens,
As if Angels heard my call.

Yet you left me in the evening,
when the seasons weren’t aware
as a secretive departure
that’s left silence everywhere.

And I feel a sobered sadness
With a chill that’s seeping through,
Each day I wear your overcoat
With pockets full of you.