Saturday, August 23, 2014

My numb stare out the window
lands my eye on a distant branch.
Near the top of a cottonwood across the farmyard
Beside a dry dead limb
I can see the roundish rippling form
Of one leaf in its winded dance.
It swings from its stem erratically
As it's tossed in the fitful air
And my seeing the stem and the leaf
Though far off, somehow TAKES me there.
And I know the leaf glossy, and how rough the bark
And it's real though it's far and far.
So my thoughts of you take me distance and worlds
Away. Though you're gone from me, there you are.
Though you're gone,
there we are.

Friday, August 22, 2014

I glimpsed a pitch black butterfly
Out of the corner of my life
I think it's flown round here before
Its wings a cold dark knife

I know I've seen pure light shine through
The flaming dying leaf
Its shine my only sanctuary
In the raging battle of grief.

The light the dark I see them yes
With eyes that are not clear
But will not close to black butterflies
Or to the light that is always near.

Thursday, August 21, 2014



I dreamt they invented a new solution for pain
and called it sleep.
I said I want a double dose, want it full and peaceful and deep.
I don't want to wake again I said for an age
and rolled into bed.
I drifted and dozed and floated free
but could only live in my head.
A quiet place with the lights turned down but not
a thing I could see,
nor touch with my empty but reaching hands,
this new unfeeling me.
Not good enough! I cried to the cosmos, the uni
verse, the world.
And for my dreaming ingratitude back
into wakeful pain I was hurled.