Words

The words of jargon spool

measured
without cease

thickening the air with a might
that only words could
until one of us ends the noise
with simple unhappiness.

Monkey Mind

I have yet to learn the tricks
for taming the mind
where unruly thoughts grazed by a breeze
loosen
then are routed

and I scurry to catch the one or two
I can still remember.

You

In you, implicit
in the pronoun vous
or preferably tu
I am here
beside you lighted in flesh
or in a nebula of the mind

we cut across the sky
fleet with the weight of air
looking down at what we left behind.

Her Words

I sit down to write but realize that what I really want is to distill a thought, a feeling, into its most crystalline form.  So instead, I return to her words.

Aging Smokey

He does not know his age
speckled with light by the window
arranging those paws that have held
more than my hand
in the slot of a moment
that is outside of time.

My Words

I guard myself against
a solipsistic madness
revelling in the plangent
parting with reluctance.

Ourselves

Like the pith of an oak
that is unseen in a steadfast way
against the rushes of a nighttime wind
we have alone and with one another
in laughter, in conversation
our own pith despite time
returning to ourselves again and again.

Fall in Late Summer

It is inevitable
this fall of the season
the rite of descending from my bike
the startled midair flight
then gazing into my neighbor's face
her concerned smile
from a yellow Beetle
and us crossing paths
lamenting over the brevity of a season.