One day the song would return
And save me,
Pluck me from the glittering waves,
Under the arc of a great rainbow,
Blind and gone quiet.
.
In rows of two,
Holding hands,
Waiting for the chorus line
Of a great church hall
Echoing the lives of all those
Knelt in the return.
(draft)
The dancing people lay waiting:
Dreaming of the waves,
And diamonds,
Cast across the sand.
.
A curtain call of phantoms,
Ghosts of the full moon,
Leave footprints
For the sun to feast on.
.
The bridge is long,
Steady and sure,
Crossing nothing
But the arc of blue sky,
Where the reach of time
Scatters the ashes of remorse.
(Granny’s Porch – Part III)
Chance the big window again:
Steady watcher of lives,
Arbiter of time.
Soon, a new April sun,
Will check the clock,
And beckon the worn out times,
Still hidden in dusty corners.
.
I only remember frail fingers
Wiping down the pane, distorted by years,
Sparkling like piano keys,
Touched by children,
Where the sharpness of notes,
Hovers and holds,
Sprawling across the old wood floor.
.
My grandfather grasped her hand,
To dance that one day,
Then, after a year,
His death was bathed in a soft-smiled comfort.
We were mesmerized,
While our sadness,
Was framed in the hard line of rain,
Faithfully passing.
.
Soon, granny’s gospel hymns fade,
Her soft hums trailing off,
Leaving the creak of the back door,
Where the kids still run in,
And out,
Chasing the first flowers of spring,
Reaching for the sweet nectar in the skies above.
Gardens
.
The sky is indifferent to this corner,
While another ecology watches over
The intricacies of winter’s web.
.
Horizons are born here,
And will shine,
One last time,
Into a still gaze of stone.
.
Surely these things will linger.
.
We might be free then,
Sitting in the fading wind,
And sun.
At last.
While our shames fade
Into temples of silence.
.
No turning away,
No denial,
The great sweep of time,
Will gather this all up,
And bring us home
Once again.
Forget holding these days,
Slipping into winter’s cache.
Forget staring into evening’s countdowns
No sense is made in counting light
Where time is the futile game of the insane.
The daily bread,
Given on this day,
Cast in poppies
And blooming blackberry corners,
Everything sprawled and covered.
.
Just over the hill,
Nights feed on themselves:
Fickle contests of fading light.
Here, the din of thrush,
Trickles of water,
And a last, hushing turn of leaves
On a vanishing breeze,
Where doors open to the old memories
Of dusty roads, watermelon mornings and
The easiness riding along.
.
One last whisper of rain,
Faint, barely promised,
Never seen.
That’s it.
The faithful tenancy of days has arrived.
Across the low, grassy plain lies a river,
Some great promise,
Wandering easy,
While storms pass over.
.
I remember this,
Scrambling through the intricacies
Of sculpted earth:
A dinosaur sailor,
Piloted by the distant empty,
Blind to the piercing stillness.
.
This river goes to where it came from,
And back again.
Watching from the hill,
Or floating through the soft boils,
The sun always casts the morning,
The creases,
Breaths,
Shadows,
Stones,
Mud, squeezing between toes,
Drying into the dust
That will soon color the sky gold.
.
The afternoon holds just enough
Life and dying,
To be familiar
In the narrow, empty spaces
That keep to themselves
In a confusing mass of briars,
And dried or mildewed berries:
Take your pick.
While the shadowed visitors of place
Return home.
.
The day’s path gives a ride
Good sojourns,
Moving, really moving along.
And this time:
Like the knob of some old radio,
Cranked slowly one way,
Boisterous and fading
Again and again.
.
Nobody talks about this stuff,
Making for poor politics.
None, really.
Unless we can all turn askew,
Upwards. All of us.
.
‘Cause we all see it our own crooked ways.
.
And one more:
Don’t fall for the witching hour,
Telling you, this moment:
Some speck of time,
that could turn the day.
No. Don’t.
Just watch this time,
like it was back then.
Speaking softly now in a still lingering light
Measured in long peeks out the window,
Until the life of darkness
Resumes the ongoing day:
Slipping,
Stretching,
Into something else.
.
Some of us lost the light
Before we were even able
To sequester its sparkling splendor
In some imaginary pause.
.
I walked right past the bus!
.
That’s how it grabbed me:
Before I could even catch up to it
And after it was long gone.
.
Now cardboard afternoons,
To box the passage of days,
And the frayed edges of old towels
Hanging stiff along a sagging clothesline:
Barely swinging back and forth.
March, April, May
Those hideous months of spring
And dying.
Times to drink to oblivion
Or get sober
Because things have gotten that bad.
More than once.
.
Summer is just a known
Constant staleness, defying perpetuity.
And time of asking calendars
About the rules of a waiting game,
Measured in drought,
Day length,
And sometimes tomatoes.
.
Give me those 4 days in October,
September, November.
Doesn’t matter:
It’s when the counting ceases,
And the shadows come to stay.
Shaken Rain 