The Well

Nothing has happened, yet;
how many minutes are spent
between thunder and storm?

Faith, a booming sound
which summons soul; no!
precedes it like a bucket

blindly lowered
into the well;

how carefully we listen
for the resonance
of water.

Lessons of Flame

If I have loved you quickly, called
you, silver moth away from night,
flickered in your small black eyes
like burning star with promises
so cruelly broken- how can I

expect forgiveness?

If I loved you, certainly, the scars,
the marks you have so rightly gained,
will teach you not to love again without
a thought of happiness or sorrow.
For my light, the heat that you have

borrowed, will glow and spark
to captivate, to captivate another.

The Freedom of Having (Nothing)

Did you think I would
carry you forevor like
a sack of coins-
never spent,

never lost?

This question, too,
has value, equal weight.
I spend my thoughts,
my life, my worry on

the price of wisdom.

When two people love,
like cypress trees standing
in the garden, truly belong
to no one but to please

the world; like stars

whose shine resembles
precious diamonds, yet
cost the dreamer nothing,
so must I remember

that the contents of
my emptied heart
were given freely.

Unnecessary Epitaph

I slept late, for no apparent reason;
the day moved on without me
moving in it.  And I thought

how like death, this obscure
absence... even to those
who haven't really vanished.

As for my psuedo-missing presence
dreaming in its linen sheets, there were
no sorrows, lamentations, tearful prayers
nor funeral or ashes spread; instead

the sweetest yellow daffodils
that often line the altar of a final
sleeper's bed were still outside-

growing in my garden.

Substance and Longing

When the grace of earth
and air surround me,

I am a piece of world
that is but puzzle with

all my irregular edges
and fears. Where are

the missing shapes
that belong beside me?

Where is the hole
I was built to fill?

Some displaced things
were meant to be stranded,

wounded, unfashioned.
Consider the soul whose

vacant form is nothing
but prayer, whose unseen

presence fills the "nowhere"
with all it has to give.

The Remains

I've let you go. I have not
let you die. You are like
the wind, now: invisible
yet present. See how small
leaves tremble as if
their bodies are alive?

Making

Before this life,
we were but dark,
open, quivering.

Inside a planet
not unlike the cell,
a secret dream

is forming-

the tiny shell
that holds
so many things.

Who could know
that life was pleased
by "making"

that it gave
the "made" ability
to make itself?

And what of
suffering, when
shells are emptied

every gathered property
expelled: its light,
its well-earned love?

This is self-less;
making room for
something else.

Infinity

is the poison of discovery,
the chance of dreaming
recurrent dreams as the mind
is slumbering. Death,

and the notion of death,
a stringless kite surging
up and out through black,
black night until it disappears;

and what we're left holding-

a ball of twine fastened to
a small hole punched in the wood
of a handmade spool.

The Quest

You are looking where
the eye becomes a stone;
darkness is another form

of "finding".

And depth? there is
no ending to this silence
that feeds upon itself

from "within".

On a patch of snow, just
below the window, sparrows
scratch the frozen surface

with blood-stained talons.