The Mountaineer

They found his body, cold
kissing Mt. Everest
decades after he failed
to reach the summit.

He chose the dangerous
life, avoided a common death
like pneumonia or cancer.
I'm sure he heard trumpets

and opera music in
the piercing winds,
his whistling, labored
final breathes.

The rocks above him
remained untouched by
his vanity or poignancy.

His corpse became
a history lesson,
his frozen, broken bones
picked clean by hawks

and still, his bootprints
pointing towards the sky,
etched in ice, in some small
way, kept him immortal.

They left him just the way
he died, persistent.

Fluff

Who does she think
she is- that huge, round
face, golden skin & light?

From another planet, she
would be a tiny speck of fluff,
a bump in the road or
an after-thought.

Still, in her predictable
life, she faithfully migrates
across the sky; imperfectly
perfect and prideful.

A Food Chain Issue

Last night, I watched a sparrow eating
a deer carcass- who knew those sweet,
little birds were carniverous? then,
I saw the barn owl snatch the sparrow
who still had venison in its mouth.

And so, I thought in sequence:
who eats barn owls?

The Gate

Who are these dark-eyed angels
who gather like wolves around me,

intimate yet wild?

The mind silently counts them
like it counts the hills

that covet the house. Then,

I cried out the three names
of God "save me from myself,

from my sadness, my ruinous life".

From the woods, a claw reached in,
mercifully scooping my heart out.

The last sound I heard in this
world where fog meets light

was the yard gate securely
latching behind me.

Perhaps, I have become the shadows
that haunt us.

Exile

What are you doing here?
You don't belong here. You
are a stranger. You will live
alone without the comfort of a goose
or stone. Your inheritance will be weight,
your death heavier still. In the morning,
you will pray for your children; at night,
you will bury them. When you dream,
though you see a beautiful garden,
you will wake up hungry and homeless.

The Existence of Pearls

A tiny bird is waiting
inside every lonely womb.
My child pretends to sleep;
a dark angel watching.

On the other side, a finger
pointing always towards sky;
a solitary ray of light
bends down to meet it.

So the pearl spirals round
its grain of sand and grows
in darkness, an unseen jewel.
The mussel that cradles it,

tightens and chokes it.

Shadow

If you move or scream, this means
you are among the living. That old,
ungrateful pain in the spine reminds
you, feeling anything is good.

Though loneliness is lonely, this too
can remind you of beauty, of silence,
of thought, of another evening. Possess
yourself before possession overcomes you.

Did you know that shadows imitate life;
that brightness creates shadows behind or beside
a body? For this reason, we bury the dead
and hide them from the sunlight.

A Mother's Voice

Long I have scavenged the seaside
for that one pearly, pink cone.

They say a conch can sing.

I have half-heard the whispering
crabs scuttling back and forth,

the thousand voices of seaweed
rubbing sand, the distant screams

of joy, of whale or dolphin.

Then, the sharp, clear call
of my mother "come in, come in"

and I do.

The Horse

There is a black horse
in the rose garden. I like
the horse; grandmother doesn't.

All she can see are trampled vines,
useless buds, petals eaten by
a disrespectful beast. My eyes

are drawn to the creature's fluid
muscles, graceful neck, the curvature
of its body. Never a rose could compete.

Faux Angel

If I cry for the dead, my body loses
its heat, its water, its salt. Like snow
heaped deeper on the sloped walkway, I lie
impossibly white, impossibly cold & quiet.

How does the door swing open when
we're not looking? Whose heart claws
its way through ice and tiny, bow-shaped
bones driven by love, destroyed by love,
the manner in which it leaves them.

See the boy, his winter coat, his blue
wool gloves, lying down at the end
of his small bootprints to make the faux
impression of a fallen, flapping angel
whose giant wings have trapped him.

Sweet Anonymous

Sweet, song of my sadness!
We kissed in the rain, married
in a storm. My long white fingers
touched your lips like lightening touches
the field and cannot be forgotten.

What accumulates in our hearts
can cause its stillness, heavy like
a rock. Once it's tossed into
the river, it becomes anonymous,
belongs to the wilderness.

On a cloudy day, we layed down
innocent, loving first, then after
the storm, our memories drift away,
a single leaf twirling downstream.

The Sleep of Kings

You are an old man
speaking into wind.
Knowledge is a sickness
of disbelief; it names
its fools. At the moment
of sleep, a man is humbled;
his soot-filled eyes resemble
death. Even the miracle
of his mind ceases to exist;
in an unknown language
his futile dreams attempt
to unravel its origons,
its mysteries. Always,
early in the morning,
a halo of light, again
crowns him king.

A Shadow

We are creating,
everyday, a place
to lay our heads down.

At night, the wingless
man dreams he can fly;
the woman that he loves

stays sleeping, her body,
a bruised & fallen apple.
The stars, listening

and watching, hear them
breathing, the tender way
their up-turned faces smile

and death becomes a tenuous
shadow in their curtains,
banished by the moonlight.

Follows the Storm

It is as much a lie
as truth deceives
its giver. How sweet
the blood, the thorn,
a punctured breast,
the trembling hands.

I'm not immune to joy,
I've seen what gives us
pleasure. Confessionals
are filled with dying people
who do so gracefully.

My tongue is not bitter,
because it refuses to sing.

Dearly, I loved the brightness
of roses in the rain before the wind
unclothed, destroyed them, just as
memory & grief following the storm.

Great Men

There are no great men left
in the world; a winter tree
devoid of leaf or birds, several
clouds captured in its branches.
Who will answer our questions or
pull the snow down? How will we
find the way back to the cold,
shallow grave we were born in?

Picking Flowers

Who are you calling
in the night? You are
older, now, so you should know,
no one is coming. Maybe,
you should go and get her.
See how roses make their way
to sunlight, thorn by thorn.

A Piece of Wood

To speak of love is
to kill it. In a box,
a cat is trembling;

soundlessly,

a tree is falling
in the forest. Do you
hear it?

How I love silence
like a piece of wood,
a book, a spider-

the mouth-less
language of living.

Architecture of Soul

I am building
a house. Not
the one I live in
but the one I've seen
furnished in my dreams.

A child's room.
A stranger staring
out the window. A hammer,
nails, a leveler. Calloused
hands, weathered heart.

This will be
the house I die in.
Its door unlocked,
the handle worn & broken.
Someone on the balcony

but no one home.

The Fortune Teller

I knew you before
you knew of me.

A line across the palm,
a ship chartered out

to open sea, a moth
clinging to a small crack

in the plaster ceiling.

Just because I breath
does not mean I love you.

This too, is dream, curtains
in an evening's breeze,

sounds of thunder just
beyond the blackened fields,

pounds the sky like two
stones clapped together,

then, a faint drizzle.

Late Into the Evening

Our voices, the window open,
the difference between dark
and light, I remember, someone
eating bread & fish with dry
red wine late into the evening.
Have you forgotten the room
we ate in, the moonlit walls
we undressed for, our shadows
moving like animals hunting,
the sleep that killed us?
Where are you dining now?

The Lingering

For one day, I returned,
a poisoned spider straggling
to the center of its web.

It matters how you die
and where. There are good
lives, those who persevere

the quick, dreadless passing
from skin to earth; all that's
holy rises to the surface.

I've gathered what I can,
the broken shells scattered
on a morning's shore and

better still, left them there,
clinging to the sands.

Weathered

This is a new story,
not the one from years ago;
when your surface was rough,
un-polished, even interesting.

There are reasons why
buried stones are never found,
like whales who seldom leave
the dark and quiet depths,

toothless mountains moving
like a universe, each one old
and different. See how oceans
calms itself to flawless glass,

without a sign of wave
or salty froth, obeys the laws
of nature, drowns itself
and dies. This too, is how

the hidden pebble, weathered
by the wind, the rain, the silence
becomes seamless as an egg,
white and smooth as flesh.

Of Arms

What would we hold,
your tongue, I hope.

A shallow grave is all
I know. Ribs to stone,

heart, hard as
iron. And still,

above, pulsing lights,
for that matter dead

before they reach
the eye. What would

we carry down into
the grave, smoldering

thick, grey smoke like
holding onto fire.

The Never-Ending Force of Gravity

Not only tears,
sliding down the cheek

but wings, plaited
silver-feathered folding

over spine's boney
protrusions. And so

we learn the role of
gravity, of things

that drop from heaven
burning, never seen

again. There are
mysteries we can't

explain like love
or light or angels.

As for me, I never
stop to breath or sleep,

roaming with my torch-lit
eyes pulled away, into

a never-ending radiant
golden glittering.

A Time For Sleep

There's time
to sleep. For now,
I write, my words,
a flock of gulls diving
down, synchronized,
one behind the other.

Now, I climb
the ladder up
into the stars
whose eyes plucked out,
bleeding light, have
never seen their own
silvered, gorgeous bodies.

Night, where all
things certain of,
at least, a tenuous
existence, the world
expanding like blackened
clouds, claims the dead,
the soundless, the painless.

Need I mention
the darkened road
whose answer, like
an open question, like
love, it falls asleep,
weary, cold and vanishes.