Clouds

Over the cold lake the cloud banks

Are like mountains I have known
Or lived next to in a past life.

From a distance they belie

Their stuffing of ether

So that I hurry towards them

Eager for the heights.

In photo: matcha and baked oatmeal.

A Pause

In between patients are the moments

That are outside of time,

When morning clouds have gone

And clear skies await my gaze.

Lady Macbeth

If it were only a quirk that she could ignore
As she goes through the evenness of her day.

Daylong, her eyes twitch in rapid succession
In a way that they need to in spite of herself.
And when she is wearied in the loneliness of her shame,
She comes to me, eyes averted from my gaze.

And if it were only a matter of creases in her sheets,
She would laugh it away with a wink of an eye.

Cardinal at Sunrise

On the coldest of days I saw you again:
Splash of red in this land of crumpled leaves.

I had to look twice to see,
If in the calm suffusion of the new day,
You were not the autumn that stayed behind.

Diagnosis

I ask a question of me more than you:
Now that the symptoms are half-codified,
Do you look at the sun in much the same way,
Or at just fallen snow on the tattered elms?

Day after day, they will be here.
I see you leaping over the science
To pronounce that nothing really has changed.

The Dance

With a quick lick of my nose
You decide that a lap
Would be fitting for now.

Your preamble to rest
Goes something like this:
Circle once, circle twice,
Settle down on my book.

In mid-sentence your tail
Flicks over the words
And all I can see
Is a cat in repose.



in photo: sencha and aebelskivers - with cat nearby.

Her Mother

Perhaps written in haste,

In the heat of feelings she barely fathomed,

Her words pouring out,

Unchecked in bold print,

In the midst of my day.

Her mother is lost

In the thicket of her mind,

With only smiles in answer

To yesterday's words.

We sit together

Each month counting the ways
That are lost to her now,

Of dropped numbers

And forgotten words,

And little for me to do

But to place my hand on hers.

Sunrise

Up until now
Catching the orb
At the right moment
Has been
Out of my reach.

Waiting Room

On straight-backed chairs we sit,
Each waiting for a name we could answer to,
And in the minutes that stretch,
Eased along by an ancient issue
Of a tabloid I would not buy,
I am offered a glimpse
Of shoulders too versed
In the nature of chairs
Of a doctor's waiting room.

A Rooster from the South

In wet sand his toes curled
While he listened to waves

Louder than those back home.

Fleeing from ice

That heaps on the shore,

He found an unending blue

To hide the cares of home.

And when the time came to return,

He thought to bring back

A bobbing rooster for my desk.

My Uncle

From a photo I could see
The gauntness of his shoulders,
And hair without the sheen
I remember from years past.

From a high chair I had sat
Tallying equations that he hurled
Onto a six-year old's head.

His liver falters and kidneys have failed,
And he holds in abeyance
Those equations I still remember.

Tuesday Morning

I cannot say enough
About the quiet joy
Of opening a book.

Prajna, the Cat

I remember your eyes

In those first days that became years,

Darting and wide at my touch,

And how you walked into the patch of sunlight

To be alone in your new home.

When was it that I first noticed

That slow blink from across the room

As you fell asleep to my voice?

Meditating on New Year's Day

When the room fills with light

And the scent of cinnamon

And my hands finally warm on my lap,

Then I gaze on the light

And its eventual shift into dullness,

Returning again with my breath.