Don't talk to me of December

Don’t talk to me of December
when the trees
oh the trees color me
the way I am brown and gold
and I fall still through the air
waiting for wind

The sky is melting
see how it passes the fold
and eases out the wrinkle
like time
swift the night falls

Sundown is like wings now
scraping the edge of the ocean
I can see it beginning the curl
and then darkness haunts the edge
and I wonder where the warm is
hear it slip and unfurl
sail into summer and strip the gauze
from nighttime’s cover and mirage

Sing me spring
skip February this year
lay me across a desert mound
I’ll not breathe until you wrap with web the storm
then glove and pen erect
whisper midnight into warm

Through Imagination's Eye

Through Imagination’s Eye

Where across the landscape

is the blunt protruding object

that trips our vision,

where is the truth 

that captures people

and wraps them in gossamer?

Words are so mighty

they can string an ache

on the line of a heart,

let it absorb all the nuance

of a minutes captured view

and like a painting of a backyard fence,

rickety becomes romantic.

The imagination

is free to create any patina

it chooses,

a finger, a dimple,

the sleek slide of a shoulder,

can become blemish free

and more fertile and tactile then reality. 

The allusive is so alluring.

Like a butterfly

it darts past the corner of our eye,

flits nervously around the halo of our

freshly shampooed hair

floats nebulous and free

on a tide of air,

then leaves us to 

our purple haze of memory. 

We have not been there

for the agony of birth

from the chrysalis of change

nor do we even know if wings

hurt when stuck together with

the glue of beginning.

What if, that day it is storming 

and some errant rip of air

tears the gossamer fluid grace

of wing, before it can fly? 

We float with the butterfly,

across a vision that we can build or shatter

to our choosing

and leave the sad and broken body

of reality to turn to dust.

Out of Line

It’s been a long time, she said
into the dull phone,
the phone that had been waiting,
waiting for just this call.
               
Where are the dreams we had, she thinks.
You were going to bring them to me.
Remember how, when you left
you turned against the sunset,
I saw the tear.

You with your bright star.
I saw it first
before you even knew its name,
it was your future.
Far, far it would take you and stake you,
I could feel it when I fell
and tried to keep from looking into you,
down into the brown eyes of your growing.
But I did fall and your arms measured me
and I could see that I was not quite right.
                           
His voice sucks her into the wire
across the lines that dissect the sky
and makes lives accountable with it whispered answers.
She can see him hunched into his shoulders
delaying truth with pretty words,
looking across the yard where a cat sits somnolent
in the doorway and perfume invades the room
seeping from the closet.

He is saying good bye now,
the shattering is too loud.
She cups the receiver to keep it
from finding her ear.

The phone drops for a moment
from the grasp of his shoulder,
as he types answers that are important
into the glass eye of his future.
                   
Good bye, she says
into the dangle of line
that lays broken and betrayed on the desktop.

And all he can hear is a dial tone.

(a story poem from the good old days)

Her Song

See that girl all blush and thin
See the sky that dangles
At the edge of her whim
Blue dress exploding all around her
Hear the galloping of her youth

Hear her song
Of heart so long the sound
Held in dimming light
Covered with a flannel gown
Hung in the sun to flower

She walks where eyes watch
And melts as she passes each whisper
Her colt legs strong in root take note
Of each cracked sidewalk cloaked
With her impatience

She is falling in love with a love song
That plays her each night in dim
Her skin like angel dust when touched
Leaves a pattern laced with trust

See this woman strong yet fragile
She who walks the road less traveled
Dusted off from many falls
The girl still sings within her walls
Her song

Gone Now

February is gone now,
with her quick, clean lines
and tilting globe of determined sky.

She hung her skirt out wantonly
on the naked open neighborhood,
dark with clouds and pink with dawn,
I listened as her tongue licked trees.

No need for solace in her rain,
my weeping chalice is gone,
where winter skies and dappled roads
flush the aching river in me
to the sea.

A tree was made so love could stay
and blossoms gamely on that day
with pink peach petals weeping down
where tears have not an opening found.

February is gone now,
with her quick, clean lines
and tilting globe of determined sky.

I have fondly said goodbye.