The Weight of the Blanket of Love

                                                           

                  

It is different this year
For the hole is hand stitched
With the thread that I lost
Then re-found and re-fit

And the tear covered fingers
Of hands to the face
Are changing the vacancy
To knowledge and grace

Can you see how the empty
Really waits to be filled
And the fabric of time
Is sewn with heart’s skill

For the sweet smell of sunshine
Still hangs on the fence
Within the lost pages
Of life’s circumstance

So don’t worry my darling
Where ever you are
Is a minute just now
And then gone but not far

Though the road may seem empty
When the skin feels the cold
 The weight of my heart
Is the blanket you hold

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http://www.angelfire.com/zine/bereaved/michelleopen.html

For Now the Fern

Pathways and fern-crossed feeling
an everglade delight of day
with voices like music all around
stop along the path and watch the sun
it streams across the air
tatting sky to deep dark loam

How grateful this moment caught
the eye stops
and tells the spirit bless you
under the canopy of whatever the sky
a fern requests the shade you see
though I so love the sun shine on me

Stay this minute now my heart
delight this art of growing old
and knowing something to unfold then on
the dropping leaves will tell
how tomorrow will be more

for now the fern

Lighting up the Past

Light of sunny now

touches ghosts in ancient space

where yesterday sleeps

Covered Bridge Beneath the Waning Light of Autumn

she is sometimes so full of another color
like a season she searches true the minutes
capturing them as they slip sand and wash
into the wealth of the moon and more become

listen to the crashing of her high tide
like forest at night in creep up with the leaves
waiting for the dew all crawl and rustle
she hears one grain of sand shift soft relief

she is wealth of moon and more a ramble
a tree stands with her in the tall of stretch
and scurry things twig her toe in walk along
and jam her sway along the way of best

light is such verve and frequently captured
by the chain that pulls her to design
the falling of the magic fills the chasm
and brings her to a fast focus align

listen can you hear the seasons changing
across her skin she feels it with her warm
and waits beneath the waning light of autumn
for a storm to nudge her dormant ions

Reflection

Long past noon
when the banshee sleeps
and the tall grasses stiffen,
you may find an indentation in the ground
where lovers, rolling and wet,
covered with pearls of sweat
had open-eyed sex.

The earth saves things like that.
It keeps them like marbles and summer wine
until they are warm and green.
Caught against a rock, sun spent,
they will change their color each morning
until the last wind coats the ground with dust.

Who will remember when lush summer lips
begged blossom from a seed?

In the harbor,
far from the loud noise of meadows,
the fog has closed the sky
and muffled the mood of salt.
Even the sea has gathered oil and water
and twirled some forbidden coffee spoon into life.

Can you claim the reflection?

The Coming of Evening and Light

The soft purr of evening is coming now,
across the mountain it weaves its light
and pulls the curtain slowly,
slowly down the tops of trees
still lit with fire, you can see the breeze take hold
of one last stem and then
lost in dim it is sucked in.

A canopy of clouds, lit now by another fire
from streets where people play electric lights
and dance on curbs where rain once poured a river
until the sky was dry;
slowly now the music drifts from open doors
and the white milky sky comes down and touches ground
while the city melts into 10 o'clock,
a laugh sparks one street then two
where you and I and sky gather like old friends,
sleepy and glad to be home again.

Driftwood

Remember when
darling warmed a tongue so new
that peppermint was suave alone
and we kept the willow wet with taste of it

Oh it was so filled up
the ocean of us crashing into life
tearing footprints from the sand
and wearing sun as if summer
was forever and there was no danger
in the sweet warmth of the burn

I thought it came so quietly
each minute's slip come more
until the changing was so loud
the thud of my cloth falling around me
awakened the aching taste of joy

And the memory
of being tossed about in salt and licked
oh the tongue of grit so rough
it took control away and day was turned
and night was sky and dry came so slowly
spitting out sand then taking another taste
again and again

Not the same sharp features now
littered on the beach of time
forgotten leaves raked clean
and yet I touch the change and know
the same magnificence