~ I ~

Here, in the moment 

when music breaks the air, 

the lofty door swings open wide. 

Here your approach and arrival 

become one, and buoyed 

by a strange familiar longing for home, 

you cross the worn threshold, 

you finish and begin.

              ~ II ~

And when you look back over your shoulder,

remember that nothing is ever

gained or given without tethers. 

Keep faith in earnest

as the hours roll one into the next, 

faith when shadows fade. 

Keep close what you’ve carried:

coins and costrel, your book of fears.

And if there is dissonance along the way 

remember that nothing promises to be simple 

on this ineludible procession,

this path of stones.

              ~ III ~

The silver maple’s samaras 

float and spin above the yard, 

seed wheels spiraling down

in the brisk morning air.

You’d try to catch them.

You pulled them from your hair.

And when you closed your eyes

to tip your young face to the sun,

you imagined the sprites’ papery wings.

              ~ IV ~

Unannounced and uninvited,

a visitor from another time and place

joins your table, bends your ear,

returns you to an old sorrow.

And so the hours brim and tip 

with stories and rounds, 

some remembered, 

some dormant and drawn up 

as if from a deep well,

while all the while overhead

a fine gauze halo encircles 

the moon, signaling change. 

              ~ V ~

Oh, resolute morning,

Rage against my indolence!

Fill my weary heart with song!

For in your glory, I ascend!

               ~ VI ~

Facing west above the tree line, 

a water-colored vista,

the palette a dusky blue and gray,

in the gloaming, a distant owl

marks its territory, the round rhythmic cry 

inciting a new trepidation. 

Whatever light remains in the east

dissipates now as it slips behind the trees,

your own steps heavy in descent.

               ~ VII ~

The tilt of her chin is perfectly set 

as her skirt oscillates slightly to and fro.

The dance is unembellished, pure.

Her young spine, a straight axis.

Her lilt, both diminutive and grand.

Practice, practice, you whisper,

as you watch the girl keep tempo,

your fingers tapping a slow metronome 

as if this steady cadence, 

this tapering of time, 

were your own, nearing perfection.

               ~ VIII ~

Nocturne I – Recurrent Dream

Sometimes the dream ends with a plea: Help me.

Sometimes it ends with an admission: I need you.

Other times it ends with the sound of a lamb bleating,

caught in the wire of an abandoned fence,

as the wind blows and the field whites out—

the problem obscured but the need still piercing.

              ~ IX ~

       Nocturne II – Wakeful Orison

Sleep, carry me across these dark waters.

Give me the gift of your shore.

Make me host to your heavy resolve

So that Peace may be my companion, and Peace

My largesse for those who follow.

            ~ X ~

       Nocturne III - Hypnopompic Allegro

All the little beads crest and spill,

(the strand worn thin and breaking),

pearls slip through your fingers 

to scatter over the floor’s planks, 

as you step warily from your bed.

            ~ XI ~

And yet the morning light 

gently blankets the sloped rooftops,

undaunted by night’s tempest.

            ~ XII ~

Several swallows

at first, then many 

and now a menacing flock,

a plume of smoke.

They whistle and churee

as they muster 

over the domed silo,

then begin their wild vanishing,

drawn from the air

into the silo’s cleft,

the swarm waning until

two swallows persist, 

diving and circling

in one last bid to test 

the depth and breadth 

of this darkening sky.

            ~ XIII ~

And at the very center, the lovely aria,

the singer behind the garden’s parapet,

in a swell of passionate resolve.

And though not quite an affirmation,

the song is hopeful, sublime.

From this great vantage she will recount

all that came before, all that is to come.

How perfectly this moment is captured!—

Just like the wild violets she gathers

to her skirt to press and keep.

            ~ XIV ~

       In the thaw of winter,

           the lake’s ice 

heaves & splits,

           cracks spread their lucent 

        constellations

   under a starless sky.

            ~ XV ~

   Prayer to the Madonna

Beloved Mother,

Our loving Guardian,

Guide us to your eternal Light, 

Give us refuge.

When life’s trials assail us,

Grant us your Grace.

Teach us to yield and to discern.

Keep us safe.

Beloved Mother,

Our loving Guardian, 

We take solace in your arms.

Oh, great Mother of all things!

            ~ XVI ~

But the wicked are lost 

in a storm-tossed sea

and cannot rest, 

as the dark waters churn 

casting up a torrent

of dirt and mire.

Their eyes will fail them,

and they will lose their way,

blinded and tumbling

to their earthly fate.

            ~ XVII ~

In the progeny of a perfect afternoon,

among the blessings and the wine,

the family gathers beneath the arbor,

the musk of wisteria, the rosy sky.

The lovers wed, sentiment stirs,

and you see things as they clearly are

in the full measure of your heart:

All is given, nothing pined for—

but for the elegy of this day.

             ~ XVIII ~

Love’s madness walks the floor

and there is nothing left to you 

But these hollowed rooms,

rife with trappings, 

effigies, memories left to bitter.

Beneath love’s deceitful revelry,

one deeply rooted chord of pain

seeps like dark ink.

            ~ XIX ~

       Vespers, After a Storm

Now the breeze is at your back,

the sun returned to its rightful place.

Birds dip across your path

in a flutter of colored pinions.

You suppose a kind of meaning in their song,

meaning in the windswept trees,

as you recall the little arc of your life

replete with lessons and gifts.

Surely there’s something earned in this tenure,

though you can’t seem to name it.

Birdsong in the dappled canopy,

variegated light in the leaves

and still so much eludes you.

            ~ XX ~

Another doorway, another threshold,

but you are not the same traveler.

With all I have seen,

how is my choices are the same?

Am I resigned? Am I a fool?

If only you could split in two, 

(each with the other’s blessing)

then one could seek true valor,

benevolence in a god-inspired city,

and, that being done, the other

could contemplate for hours

the supple articulation of the naked spine

beneath the delicacy of fingertips. 

            ~ XXI ~

Behold the bare white room overlooking the cathedral,

the dome incandescent before the sky’s firmament.

The clouds, a balm.

Lean out to take the view from the glassless frame,

bright azure and gold in the whorl of an iris.

            ~ XXII ~

Possession reverts again 

between warring bloodlines.

Hillsides scorched 

in the march of allies, 

the march of enemies.

Idols exalted,

the infamous dead,

resurrected now 

from their graves of dust.

Who will triumph 

in the dawn’s wreckage?

            ~ XXIII ~

The infant brings a new sensorium,

new fine bones, heart walls and chambers.

She brings the smell of juniper in rain,

as if the spring were utterly new,

the little horseshoe garden, chaste and budding.

She brings this wanting: her open hand

guided in yours, reaches up 

to catch the first trill of raindrops.

            ~ XXIV ~

Thoughts surge like tidal forces—

the wave’s summit, its full collapse—

as you wrestle the divisible nature 

of what you hold absolute,

the ephemeral in all you create.

In the darkest hour the towers always fall,

marble pillars topple and burst.

And so the question becomes:

What rises from rubble? 

What cities? What walls?

For what is art if not pure reverie

for these flung and gathered stones 

we so willfully shape and fuse?