Citrine December

Citrine unwraps
two sides
of turning mirrors
where they threaten

Rain whispers
tangerine, peridot

Reasoning with
my uncharted paths

  

Distant Valleys

Farther and wider

Distant valleys
open memories

To rearrange more space

Connecting shapes
among the colors lifting

Me toward you again

To Amputate

Can people be amputated
from our minds
like a limb from our body,
an eye when blind?

When silence settles 
in like a web spinning
around a butterfly

Choking its wings, hiding
radiant color
that used to glow
in a vision caught

Stony silence
a citadel
high above 
intrusion or loyalty,
weeding out obsession
yet also care

Asking a friend to retreat,
deny, amputate

That section of heart's colorful wing

Graduating

Caught in a pocket
of the shadows

A distant ship
invisible to light of day

Makes space
suited to the graduating moments
in a cavern of sound overturned

Lingual

Recognize
how language determines
a path

Whether understanding
or wrath

Why speak at all
if none speak
a language

Will we all revert
to our corners,
a kind of safety sought

Since not
able to heed
what is needed

Windblown

Blueprints shift
so I shall sit

Stiller than what is,
steadier in the midst

Rather than some edge
where mirages grow
and drift,
windblown

Tides

Lifeless vanity
sneers
at tides of serenity
and mildness

Shores of trust
where questions are stilled
until answers
journey toward their crossing

Around

Straight into our eyes stares history
From afar that first chord,
a friendship's melody

Across the decades
the same story, the same sky
Across nations
here we stand eye to eye

Where a gypsy call rhymes,
singing familiarly in time

Listening for where your voice
raises in dissonant light

Creating floating sparks
around and through my heart

  

Sieve

It's okay

when love pours

like water

through a sieve

There is never a leak

or excess run-off

where love has gone,

washing it away

No, love is where love breathes

Where it flows things grow

Then we learn where

love needs to go

  

The little bird and the squirrel

The height of a blade of grass,
soft brown feathers flutter
hidden in wavy green

From the hop jump hop
of a furry fellow
crossing lunchtime paths

I watch with wonder
at feathered friend
sharing a neighborly spot
(with squirrel, hop jump hop)

How easily
they, unaware, teach
the nature
of community

Allowed

Why is there nothing left,
no trace of chapters shared

Now looking back at shadows
where our other lives did live

Shedding braided time invested,
peaceful rest ne're allowed to give

Long Farewell

How could it not be
that each and every
day since

Those times when I was drowning
and you helped me remember
how to swim

And leap
out of the water into sweet air
laughing through our tears

How could it not be
that each and every
day since

You are in my heart -
though we are years,
and years apart

  

Vaporous

So much colder,
my thoughts find
these reasons

Vaporous 

To follow an empty space
where we once found
another side of wholeness

Strewn

A thin line grows thinner

in between the people who matter most

Tossing away the knotted days

spent in unison
bound

In what seemed eternal

Through the betrayals

of ourselves our ties

fray strewn

Gray with age and dusty confusion

Heavily we step

the ground shaking too soon