HAPPY LOVE

Midnight making moonscapes of you on my mattress

I bounce across you in shadows and one-sixth gravity—

One-sixth gravity, and five-sixths levity.

Published: Rat’s Ass Review 2016

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

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

DIMINUENDO

In the garden that is sweeter than the water,
In the sea that beats the beach with playful wave,
In the sunrise like a moon,
In the blinding sun at noon,
In the sunset turning sky to fire-lit cave,

Using sweet bush scents that vary through the hours,
Using thrumming, trilling sounds both dark and bright,
There’s impressed upon my eye -
On my brain as on the sky -
The after-image of a girl in blinding light.

And I sacrifice my life upon her altar
In my alternating focus and despair
At parental altercation
And my glacial alteration
As I lose ambition, wisdom, strength, and hair.

But the thrashers sing so sweet, so sweet,
And I soak in sun so warm
With that soft sea breeze,
Those whispering trees -
That I fade with no sense of alarm.

Bring back, O bring back, O bring back my sweet one to me…

Published: Candelabrum, UK, October 2009

OBSESSION

Like a wasp making a nest under your chair
Like a lizard, watching from ceiling and wall
Like a spider living in a crack in the floor
I am closer than you know, I am here.

One day I was not there, and the next, like the pink and yellow lilies after the rain,
I am all around you, underfoot wherever you go.

You will be moving like a golden butterfly from flower to flower in a poinciana
And, coming upon you as a blackbilled cuckoo, snap!, I will have you.

Your parents may blow like a storm - like a coconut palm I bend and recover;
They, hurricanes, blow all my fronds off - and I sprout new;
They can uproot me and knock me flat - I bend my new growth up, I rise up again.

Like the sea at the rocks, I will lap against you day and night;
Like the waves on the sand I run up, and when I go down, I come up again.

Consider the fish in the sea:
I come back with the tide, with the night, with the dawn, with the moon, through all seasons and years.

Like a singing cicada by day in the bush, like a singing mosquito at night in your room,
Know: I am there with you, whether you see me or not.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, April 2009

CINDYLEE

Utterly subtly,
Sinuous Cindylee
Slyly and shyly ties
Knots in my life;
Claiming to operate
Unparadoxically,
Cuts through my heart like a
Butter through knife.

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, January 2009

NEVADA

The light in your eyes is as the sun rising behind mountains in a cloudless sky.
Your smile is like the first rain falling on desert land.
The memory of you is like a long-forgotten childhood song.
Your wisdom is like a fresh breeze springing up, slapping slack ropes against their masts.
Your being gives the seasons to my life.
If you should ever go, and take the sun and rain, the breezes and my youth,
I’d sit in the dark cave of my heart, feeling its dry walls crumble into dust.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, October 2006