These days, all my dreams
are of being at sea,
far out in water so deep
distance has a different language
fathomless
mysteries swim below me
while I watch the stars
from my small boat.
Category Archives: Learning
At Sea
Diamond Of Possibility
Gathering things into piles
we’ll sort tomorrow
is how our lives
grow dusty,
how all the facets
in the diamond of possibility
lose their luster, dim,
and wink out.
Gather Is A Verb
An action word
can fool us—
Spinning in circles
is not the same as
climbing the mountain.
About The Authors
The shy boy, who never speaks in class,
raises his hand now, when the subject matters.
How much violence, he wants to know, how
much gore can he include in his novel
of a science experiment gone horribly wrong?
Next to him, the girl doodling flowers
says she hasn’t started yet but
is thinking of a children’s story
about a pony, or possibly a unicorn.
Later, face shining, she stops me in the
crowded hallway to show me ten pages
of scribbled notebook paper.
She says, I’ve changed my mind.
Now, it’s a romance.
Disaster Preparedness
is the skill I’m trying to unlearn.
I work hard at picturing disaster
not stalking us at all, but rather
losing interest, wandering off.
If disaster stumbles into my door,
I want to be surprised.
When I hear that all day
tornadoes swept the Midwest
I add more curry to the soup
to smoke out trouble while
I balance the phone to my ear.
Those high winds
you remind me
are headed straight for us.
On Your Trail
Calmness has been trailing you
for years now. Can’t you feel
its breath at the nape of your neck?
It follows, resting at the place
where a mother cat gently
tugs her kitten’s soft scruff.
Be warned. If you stop, it may
catch you. And then where
will you be?
Not on track,
not on task, but
off the road somewhere,
in a meadow
just you and
Calmness, tending you with
its sandpaper tongue
and low purr.
I Need A Poem, Here
I need
a poem
some days,
a reminder
to Breathe,
built
of tiny lines.
Each pause
a place to
rest,
a soft red pillow
shaped like the suggestion
of a stop sign.
The poem puts out its hand,
whispers, Wait, and
look both ways:
Snow dusts
the dark morning.
Houses glow and simmer,
dawn and lamplight
meet and kindle
at every window.
Now, stretch
and breathe
into the new day.
That’s the kind of poem
I need now.
If A Tree Falls
huge branch cracks
mighty snap and rustle as
smaller branches, leaves, apples
collapse in concert, broken
beneath the weight of too much.
************************************
After,
this view from the forest floor–
How tall the trees look now.
How apples soften into the earth
How dried leaves crumble,
Melt into the dirt.
Lichens gray as cat fur,
Mosses soft and bristled along the flank,
Mushrooms gilled as sea creatures
Bunched together, clustered and
Humming to themselves.
Everything you’ve carried
breathes out, expands
murmurs to the ground
as you soften and disappear
curious about this new glimpse of the sky.
Still Life With Prairie Dogs
Seize the Day is a sentiment thought up by a man.
Mostly, the day seizes me, and gives me a hard shake.
So I’ve decided on a new way to get through a day.
Picture prairie dogs.
Really.
Imagine the day as a field filled with prairie dogs,
always another head popping up.
Don’t seize a thing because that’s when they bite.
Instead, take off you shoes. Stretch your pinched toes,
whisper to your fingers that they can choose not to clench.
Remind your jaw, too.
Walk through the grass. Peek into the holes
where the prairie dogs, suddenly shy, have hidden.
Give them what they demand. It’s only time, after all,
the time a man with a pen would tell you to wrestle to your will.
Relax into the opposite of seize, and the pester of prairie dogs calms.
Later, together, you can watch the sun set over your shared field
while somewhere, some man writes advice in Latin.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 