07 Tuesday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Confusion, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Moon, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Stars, Super Moon, Survival, This Pendant World, Yearning
3
Some nights
wearing your shoes
on the wrong feet
feels right
The stars
haven’t changed
the moon is bright
Maybe tomorrow
it’ll be full again
big enough
to swing this chain
rock us back and forth
along this painful tether
to which we cling
Photo credit: NASA / Bill Dunford
06 Monday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Bird Poems, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Dying, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Spring, spring poem, Survival, This Pendant World, Yearning
2.
Today, I trusted you,
straddled your wide,
bare back,
sweet mare,
doe-eyed, and healthy.
We breathed together
what good there is
of this April day,
and offered thanks
to a world,
mostly untouched:
the mountain, still there,
the grass, still starting to green,
the birds, still returning,
singing their songs
into the dark hours
of the night.
05 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Alone, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Fear of Death, Grace, Hope, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, This Pendant World, Winter, Yearning
1.
Grace,
where are you now,
embraced in loneliness,
poetry was a kiss,
now it’s this:
today, a fog—
from doorstep
to trees,
to sky—
all blended in white,
our world reduced
to blindness.
21 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Courage, Death, Dying, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Snow, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Strength, Survival, Winter, Winter poem
Imagine
if someone covered you
in ice;
how would you feel
in a chill
blanket of snow?
What darkness have
you
known, the kind
that can kill you,
your voice
silenced
in wind-drifts,
the hissing whisper
of winter’s kiss?
07 Saturday Dec 2019
Posted in Poetry
The lasting sting of salt,
zero point three milligrams
per tear,
yet, still they drop,
tapped into an ocean
where I swim,
like a child,
through the salty grief
of letting go.
She’s gone
with the quiet rains,
too gentle
to wash away the grief
of my empty hands.
Even now, I know
I’ll look back and wonder
why it was so hard
to let go.
Time will blunt
emotion, stunt
the onslaught of memory,
the true knowing
of what was lost,
now, so fresh,
but soon distant,
as gone becomes gone,
and life,
unable to stop,
moves on.
18 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Deer, Fear, Fear of Death, Loneliness, Poem, Poems, Poetry
Sentient soul, to sentient soul,
he realized her panic
when he came barreling
around the corner; sundown,
and their eyes met
for just that second,
she decided to run.
He’d forgot to honk his horn,
thought she’d made it,
then the thud,
like the snap of twig,
a broken limb,
the doe, three-legged,
ran down the ravine.
He was amazed at her speed,
dismayed by his deed,
that couldn’t be undone,
or lightened,
or made right.
In fact, he knew
there was nothing left
except she would die.
He wondered at that,
and how death arrives
when we least expect,
and then, the frantic,
lonesome search for a quiet place
to lay your broken body down,
and the terrible waiting:
last fear, last tight breath,
a final severance from this world
on what had been a beautiful night.
09 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Humanity, Letting Go, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Survival, Surviving
We are veterans of dead bones,
products of love, and its loss,
memorizers of last breaths,
and what letting go feels like.
The front line of memory gives way,
what we held in our hands,
dissolves, like water on clay–
muddy water, returning
to muddy ground, then dust;
it is a fate that awaits all of us:
empty arms, encircled of sacred air,
grasping at remnants
of what we valued there.
19 Tuesday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Loneliness, Longing, Love, Love Poems, Need, Passion, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirits, Yearning
Need,
like a bliss of birds
who flow, spring to spring,
synchronized of sun and moon,
and wing of wing.
Love is best a mutual thing:
selfish, blind, and binding trust,
passion, that crushes
bones to must.
07 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Aging, Alone, Courage, Death, Happiness, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Survival, Tulip, Yearning
Like the yellow tulip,
who blooms every year
in the pit behind our house,
who was dumped, long ago,
after her blossoms were spent—
yet, she screams, I’m still alive!—
every spring, among garbage
and weeds; like that tulip,
you don’t belong here.
24 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birth, Death, Flowers, Forgiveness, Loneliness, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Scared, Self, Soulmate, True Love
Never miss an opportunity
to buy yourself flowers.
You’ve been there
from the very first
scared and lonely cry,
and you’ll be there
until the last,
scared and lonely breath.
from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
You searched through the years
for the one big love,
a soulmate, the person
who wholly understood,
but that person was always there.
Buy them flowers.
Say, Thank you. Thank you,
and, while you’re at it,
beg forgiveness,
for the moments
you were unkind–
the voice that said, no,
the voice that said, not enough,
the voice that, come to find out,
was always wrong.
*This poem is dedicated to the roses I purchased at Walmart during a long, cold February, and who inspired several poems.
I could snuggle
between your fleshy petals,
stretch my whole body
into the many folds of your mystery.
The world would be a better place
if your breasts were its universe,
your perfume, its stars and gods.
The quote “No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone,” is from Robert Frost’s, Home Burial.
21 Thursday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Cabin Fever, Fight, Forgiveness, Loneliness, Lovers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Quarrel, Sun, Winter
I feel your love on my skin, like the sun
after days without sun,
the feel of its heat on my face,
the brightness in my closed eyelids
when I lift my head to absorb,
thank, and worship it for coming back,
lighting up the snow’s fine crystal layers,
melting the icicles on the front eve.
On days like this, I can almost forgive
winter, how it took away our joy,
shortened our few, precious days,
slowed us down, almost killed us,
but we survived for this reward:
radiant skin brushing radiant skin,
bodies ablaze, awash of flame.
17 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
10 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Afterlife, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Hope, Infinite, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Yearning
Sometimes, missing feels like stone,
a fear that what seems over,
really is over. To be alone,
is no small thing, even though,
it seems, we always are.
Between us, an invisible thread
throws itself out, and stretches—
have you seen a silk thread
blowing itself out with the wind,
reaching, reaching—how far it reaches,
attached to nothing, but air.
31 Friday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Alone, Aloneness, Conversations With Maggie, Loneliness, Longing, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry
There is only joy in love, she said.
But what about grief, I asked,
The grief that feels like stone?
That’s fear, she said, when you think
love is gone. Love is never gone.
20 Tuesday Mar 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
aspen, Aspen Trees, Bird Poem, Bird Poems, Birds, First Day of Spring, Loneliness, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Robin, solstice, Spring, Winter, Winter poem
I think the aspen is happy today,
The way the robin perched
On its bare branches.
The skin of her feet,
The skin of that branch,
One warm body pulsing blood,
The other pulsing with spring sap.
To be touched after so long,
As your buds begin to break
The surface of what separates:
Your ability to drink of the sun,
And that long and naked loneliness.
07 Wednesday Mar 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Germany, Hawaii, Home, Island Fever, Loneliness, Longing, Mauna Lani, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Poland, Prague, Suffering, Travel
It’s a real thing, he says,
Musing of moving from Mauna Lani
To Austria, Poland, Prague, or Germany.
Haven’t been to the ocean
In three months, he says,
As he pecks out letters,
One by one, on the keyboard.
Of course, we later joke
About wanting island fever:
A life absent of snow, of the ice
We slipped upon, of gray days.
But to trade the aspen,
With its bare arms,
And its crystaling rime
And silence, the way it pleads,
The way it trembles
Among its roots, from start
To start to start–
That anticipation, that loneliness,
That incredible wonder—
Even in paradise, the heart
Has its hole. It has its terrible
Brokenness, and its frantic
Longing to be away.
15 Thursday Dec 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
The cold that is loneliness–
Ice, snow, hunger.
Did we care
The days had shortened?
Dark mornings,
Dark afternoons,
We stumbled, it’s true,
But don’t we all stumble,
Slide on the ice–
A dangerous toboggan
Of metal and glass and rubber
Just sliding,
sliding, sliding.
Where will it stop–
Against a sign, a bank of snow,
An oncoming car?
We turn the wheel
Left, then right, then left
And tap on the brakes,
Hoping they will catch
Onto something solid.
My love, turns out
You were the solid thing
On which I caught.
Bits of Poetry 