twilight tree

poppies

sunset tree

landscape

pears

blue barn

What Can't Be Written

Finally I had to close the book,
take a furlough. The language
though rare, raw-boned,
was only words,
squiggles cavorting
across a page.

My eyes grew red
but not with tears. I wanted
to circumnavigate those lines,
sail straight into that searing sea
the poet swam, but instead
I shut the book.

                I sat on my park bench, book in lap,
                and real poetry leapt to life before my eyes.

A brunette child on tiptoe
lifted a fistful of her mother's hair
to her nose as if
it were a buttercup.
She closed her eyes, lashes
thick as sable brushes against her her cheeks,

and when she opened them again,
alliteration laughed aloud.
My heart seized
as my hand rose
to my face, invisible curl captured
in childish fingers

I breathed the fragrance of my mother's hair,
her neck, her ear.
I thought I might drop right there
in a puddle of tears, even if strangers
thought me a lunatic

Contained in one instant,
forgiving time delivered  lifetimes,
a verse so fully drawn, and when you stood
behind me and asked what was wrong,
I couldn't explain. The moment
had passed beyond words.

             

Avalanches

Living at sea level
ice is foreign,
Avalanches don't come
from hulking mountains
that dissolve in a blur of whiteness,
blankness, blindness,
empty cold.
Tears don't freeze,
become snowflakes on lashes.
Shoulders don't sink
into endless, powdery pillows,
too tired to move, roped
to oblivion. Lost

But avalanches come,
even in the swelter of summer.
Warm waves
crash down as suddenly as snow,
swallow up breath in salty gasps,
thrashing rasps. clenched teeth,
flailing in space. Papery lids fold
over dead iris eyes,
a shutter, Click.

Jed

My heart is broken and may never heal. Years back I wrote a poem for my son detailing his growth from infancy to manhood . In the last verse I expressed an idea that has proven to be untrue…….for I have outlived my child and did indeed see "the finished work". Still I want to share this poem in his honor..

Clay

You were clay,
all red and bumpy,
seven pounds
of unformed clay.
I looked at the lump of you,
imagined the shape
you would become, puzzled
at the slice of someone else
wrinkling your forehead,
your hair the color of rose quartz.
What to call you,
how to spell it, little efforts
to bend the still soft edge of you,
to cast a mold to hold
your undecided face
For everyday
I watched your profile move.
Your chin, your cheek,
the bridge of your nose altered.
Your voice deepened.
Your legs lengthened.
My star-eyed sculpture
twisted under unseen hands,
a project I might only watch.
Still I celebrated each change.
each chip of the chisel
each smoothing out,
the way your contours chose to shift
like fresh art everyday.

And still I know
I'll not see the finished work.
Life is not through
modeling your clay.