JIGSAW HEART

My heart's a jigsaw Eschered with small hearts:

Poets: Donne, Arnold, Hopkins, Eliot, Cole – 

Ancestors: captured, wed while on parole –

Family: formed from wandering in wild parts –

Bits of my heart. A house, view of the sea –

Rain-lilies, poincianas, jasmine scent –

Azaleas, goldfish, owls, field grass rain-bent –

Cafe on loud street – quiet library –

My jigsaw's nearly done, a work of heart!

But where’s that long-lost girl-shaped piece…

Lost, it prevents the whole, prevents my peace…

I circle endlessly for that lost part,

The missing statue for the purposed plinth,

That girl lost in some Escher labyrinth.

Published: The Lyric, USA, January 2016

EIGHT LEGS

Odin had a spider

In a web above his throne.

“Out!” he said; it came to him.

“And up!” he said; it grew.

“Legs go this way, legs go that!”

The wind began to moan.

Odin touched a spur to Sleipnir,

Through the storm they flew.

Published, Anima, UK, No.2, 2016

THE EXHAUSTED MINE

In the hard granite of a human chest

Love’s small explosions blast a cavity.

While pumps and sluices clear ore and debris,

Miners create a cavernous heart divest

Of wealth gone out. There may at times unfold

Sad tales of miners trapped by falling stone,

But life demands the risky work go on:

This treasure chest of granite’s veined with gold

The world demands be brought into the light.

A huge cathedral of the spirit’s left,

Caverns of empty worship, dream-bereft,

The treasures claimed by others as their right.

But flecks of gold still glitter in the gloom,

The heart remembers glories in its tomb.

Published, Anima, UK, No.2, 2016

GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

The wide world has its glories

In a rich complexity

But sitting watching the sun set

Is good enough for me.

Canada has six time zones

From sea to sea to sea

But one tide lapping where I sit

Is good enough for me.

The muezzins in the Saudi mosques

Wake all to pray and pee

But a rooster crowing in the bush

Is good enough for me.

And Singapore is lush and green

And managed prettily

But scrub grass and a sandy beach

Are good enough for me.

All – good enough for me.

Published online: Snakeskin 225, January 2016

DARKNESS

I miss the dark.
Nights pitchblack as pitch in the seams of the planks of boats on a starlit sea,
When you walk in a garden
With hands out in front in case you walk into a tree.
Moonless nights
Where stars let you grope over rocks at the beach with blind eye -
And then the moon rises
Like the sunlit reflecting rock that it is. Then you can see. Can see why.
Why I miss the dark.

Published online: Snakeskin (UK), November 2015

RAIN / ELIZA

I love the loud rain on the tropic roof

Telling me I’m warm and dry.

But the house doesn’t last forever –

We have to work to repair it always, always.

I love the quiet breathing of my Liza

Telling me she loves me even in sleep.

But –

Published online: Snakeskin (UK), November 2015

PORTRAITS

Easy enough, the people in the park,
A subway addict, or some screaming child:
Knock off five lines from some chance-heard remark,
A tic observed, or mood or clothes gone wild.

A longer piece for loves, coworkers, friends,
People you’ve bonded with, played some life game;
Can’t be so flip – unless the portrait bends,
Fictionalizing thoughts in formal frame.

And closer to you than your own bed mate
Is, tougher yet, perspective and full view
Of parents, more than threaded through your fate,
They’re warp and weft, the loom, the weavers too.

So, last of all, the golden trophy shelf:
That great and grand grotesquery, yourself.

Published online: The Poetry Porch, October 2015

IMPLANTS AND BIOTECH

These are the scarecrow years
When frost tears glisten
On molded and painted cheeks, beside ears
That no longer listen
Being more deaf than dead
And hearing only
Through implants and inputs into the head
Bonily, stonily.

Fears come while certainties lapse:
Fears of the dark,
Of abandonment, monsters, uncertainty. Now (perhaps)
Some Schrödinger’s shark
Divides cosmonaut, cryonaut, chrononaut
From those who can’t trust
The unknown, are ill-taught, or die without thought.

Thrive on change, or be dust.

Published online: The Rotary Dial, Canada, September 2015

THE MOON

The birds of dawn

Sing Come out on the lawn.

Flowers

Say Seize the hours.

The day, the sun

Say Don't stay – look, laugh, run.

Warm rain

Says More! Again!

A tree

Simply says Be.

Beyond the trees, the beach

Rumbles Extend your reach.

A cliff

Asks: If?

The sand

Calls for a handstand.

A wave

Says Misbehave.

Sunset

Asks you, Done yet?

The moon, that overhanging stone...

The moon says You're alone.

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, October 2014

ON ROUSSEAU'S 'DREAM'

I will be a flutist

Standing in the trees

With the lions and tigers

Stalking past my knees;

You, my naked lady

Languid on a couch -

Is the tiger standing,

Or is it in a crouch?

Enormous tropic blossoms

Open in the heat;

Your hand is out toward me,

The pipe I play is sweet.

You have no need to answer

If things are as they seem.

The scene will last forever,

A moment and a dream.

Published: The Lyric, USA, Summer 2014