Make a wish

March 1, 2014

Make a wish

The night is clear and the stars shine through

like diamond pinpricks. They are the same stars that you see.

The pale starlight reaching our eyes seems young and new,

but it is ancient, weary from travel through such infinite darkness.

Perhaps this star just gave its last breath, a small cry from the depths

of space, before shattering brilliantly. We will see its death, so many years later.

The stars are far apart,

and we are farther.

Burning

February 27, 2014

Burning

Bonfire: primal scent of woodsmoke,

red beacon, warning sign, wild dare

to the prowling, predatory darkness.

And here, in our backyard,

safe as we are on the patch of land we claim,

even here, as the light flickers in your dark eyes,

you can still hear the old nightmares calling.

And the embers drift up to the firefly flames

of the ancient Andromeda stars.

Elegy on Sleep

December 17, 2012

Elegy on Sleep

night falls

we are still awake

in bleary gray in the dark

illuminated only by halogen lamps and sleepless

delusions the small possibilities of the past seem almost

to materialize in our hands slippery soft as candle wax

or starlight we handle them with such delicacy

as we might an impossible task and still

they melt through our fingers why

do we do this to our bodies?  

eyes heavy and caffeine-rimmed filled

with the red of memory and distance the thrall

of self-indulgent melancholy we cannot

remember the nights once studded and bright

with magic or starshine dulled and frozen

                                                          the mind slips

dreams sharp and black as scrawled ink

curling bits of volcanic stone clawing

at the soft tissue of the brain but don’t

retrace spiked cavernous thoughts don’t

let yourself why do we

do this to our bodies?

night leaves me at the feet of a dim

white dawn dissatisfied

I want to wake up early with you

April 10, 2012

I want to wake up early with you and walk through the morning village

Dew like silver on the black bridge,

a silent fog on the water, a canopy

softening bare silhouettes along the canal.

The sky, blue-grey,

still sleeping in a warm bed, in a room

where the cold clings to the curtains and walls,

a house with a dark, creaking floor,

the air heavy from a long winter’s night.

Four birds in the distance,

barely separate,

move through the morning and

                                             drift away.