The "Rushing" Sound

We build the house
that leans

towards its destruction.

We turn the ear
that listens

to its lumber
creaking.

If silence is the Word
of God, what sound

is suffering?

What mother sings
when soldiers

fall? Whose emptied

arms explain
this hollow

feeling?

When a child
learns to speak,

a voice

weighs nothing.

When a bird
learns to fly

it understands
the gravity

of bone,

the sanctity
of thresholds-

rising
and falling,

living
and ceasing,

fearing
and abiding

the rushing
sound...

the circumstantial
heaviness

of its own
wing.

Entropy of Thought

You won't find solace
here

at the bottom

of a cask
or a soot-filled

heart

but in
the sober

night

a tiny
fleck of vision

extracts
itself from

living-

forms
pattern

in the chaos.

Voice of the Dog (in Rain)

It says many things "the wind
is wet, the food is gone,

I'm chained- release me."

There is nothing like forlorn
as it moves through night

cracking like a whip.

When we were born
the darkness asked,

"what form, which vessel,
what seed, this flower?"

How carefully we live
escaping knowledge,

learning how to gallop
when the fences

fall apart.

From a distant yard,
a voice repeats its sorrow

tonight, in tongues
like water

as the rain
pours down.

Reflection

In a moment,
the river robed

in cloud,

a small bird
dives into

a deceitful
ending.

Yet, the Spring

Memory traps
the grim; the net-

long night,
winter wind.

Powerful how
we're punished-

a short hallway,
the failing day.

It's no light thing
to hesitate, to linger

when the snow
is melting.

These mortal fields,
this "tapping" on my window,

the dark moored boat,
the tethered dreams-

and yet, and yet
the spring.