PHOSPHORIMENTAL

When i was a locked treasure chest
Love poured in through the keyhole
A cold lake cupped by a leafless forest
It laughed with each breath i drew
And i trembled with each longed-for kiss It stole

Love scurried off with the father in me
To the half-filled shelves of my soul
A derelict father to my daughter and son
It filled the rest of me with fine red wine
While i thirsted for mercy to console

Love smuggled me into the taverns of Anatolia
Left me in a temple on a verdant mount in Korea
Walked tent to castle with me, leaping into my camera
She blinded me with Her brilliant sable eyes
In the Old City alleys of warm Cartagena

Oh, how those eyes suspend the stars
Moon-melt laid on her soft-pressed lips
Low and glowing like a lantern in a shadow
In the jholi of her gathered-up blouse
she carries blüescent petals of wild Hyacinth

Love built driftwood bridges
From the fallen pines along Cannon Beach
We strolled as silhouettes on rippling water
Spanning the gaps between distant couplets
Placing heaven within the poet’s reach

Love filled my shoes with Its gritty sand
Trekking the Sonoran desert river bed
It traded my innocence for a bar tab in Texas
Flashing the winning poker hand It dealt
Through surgeons who cut the hurt from my head

Like a midnight train in a whistle-stop town
Love comes and goes, never really slowing down
i fought it off with teeth, spit, and poetry
Learning to duck the swing of my father’s hand
Never stepping up to return the delivery

Love buried Its diamonds and gold
In the heart of a girl i admired
Reminding me of an old, old friend
her mouth curling with recollection
Seeing me as the boy she found again

We went driving west in my Gran Torino
A reluctant soldier, aspiring scholar
Love pressed Its foot on the gas
Streetlights and road signs falling behind
We sped through the fields of my scrapbook past

Love is a storm churning slowly toward me
Swallowing the sun, sky-blue and black
Revealing that all i’d hoped i held
Was just a bucket, strong rope and pulley
Now, i gaze into Her depths – a freshwater well.

tis nothing if not heard

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I write of stars
Like people I chance upon
Explaining them in glittered ink, but
We cannot know them
Unless they are far away
And the sky is black
Like the pretty girl I saw at the counter
The one I fell in love with
Before we said our names.
So many stars. So many.


Photo: New Years, 2019, The Old City (Cartagena, Colombia)

tis nothing if not heard

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The burden we poets carry
Our love poems within which
we refer to as “he, she, you“
So many imagine it them
or fear it someone else.

Dear beloved pronoun…
I have fallen in love with you
in poems written before I knew you
and lines I’ve yet to conceive.
“You” are the throne
that every “she” ascends.

Note: In many hundreds of poems, essays, aphorisms, and in both published books and unpublished manuscripts…. my use of pronouns like “he, she, and you” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) has elicited many questions of me, among them; “who is this person you speak of?” As if there necessarily were. Every poet speaks to someone in his imagined audience at any given moment. But in truth, he speaks of a deeper light than of his own knowing; a light reflecting upon the amazing geometries of listeners. A poem unheard, is like exile for a writer. And so, this poem.

Yes, there have been names. But that One name has yet to be found to “silence these pronouns,” to gently turn about in the spectacular light of a star, and simply stay.

tis nothing if not heard

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This one will come to me
When i dim the lantern,
The trees shine,
and cobalt blue softens
Into the obsidian sky
We will say we were never two
As the moon completes itself,
Half full
and half new.

tis nothing if not heard

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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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