Patchwork

To hold in check
to keep the planets aligned
she sews together the two realities
lying side by side
in an uneasy truce

letting the words fall
one by one
into the silence
of shared thoughts.

The Other Side

A gulf lies
between intent
and thought
quietude in a breath
that spans shore to shore

where in unseen moments
a few gulls collect
like pauses
between thoughts

when time still remains
for us to turn back
to the known shore.

The Unsaid

From what was said
you can infer
the unsaid brushing aside
the skeins
before they layer us
in the two shrouds
I have created.

Gyokuro, Mon Amour

Not the barest wisp
of anything other than
what it is
or what it should be
in a cup
of the lightest green liquor
flecked with the crushed leaves of spring.

Unnamed

To be apposed to
a full-leafed tree
either crimson, lighted, in the open
or the dark green of a bittersweet
maturity
in the middle of life is
a piquancy I did not choose:
It is freely given all the same
from the storehouse of the unconscious.

A Point

dedicated to KDV

I am reminded from time to time
of a thread stretching
across the diaspora
across cities, countries, and continents
where I am a known point
somewhere in the middle
carrying within the voices of two worlds
and realizing with a jolt
when the thread slackens between us
that it is time for me to call.

Cat's Eyes

I see again through your eyes
liquid green day and night,
how the known remains new,
a warm lap
in perpetual winter
when each day blurs into the next
like an unfurled scroll of gray.

With a light tap
from you
I again can taste
each cup of tea.

Process

A vessel brims
with the colored liquid
of a rainbow, unfiltered
in imagination and
coaxed and funneled
through your hands

so that drop by drop
we retrieve
the rough hewn pearls
to ponder on
until the morn.

Waiting

I know to wait
through times
when the white fence
is no more than that

when slatted light
from the young day
is an afterthought

I wait
for the husks to fall
away
when the worn
becomes new.

Faces

From a quiver
I will draw out
the faces I have known:

Those from the years
of a clicking View-Master
in a playroom for one.

And down further
where an infant sleeps
in swaddling white,
I will find
her waiting face
unlined with fear.

The Instant

At the instant
when it falls into place
like fold upon fold
of a shawl
gently
settling


and words
stringed on blocks of wood
turn just enough
to reveal a daylight
I will not soon forget.

May Day, 2011

Within the surge that is humanity, for a few hours today, I was reminded of Walt Whitman's words and felt that I indeed contain multitudes:


I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with
the stuff that is fine ...

- Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass