Pastures I walk on
Where my window-less remains.
Crickets and butterflies,
Like this dusty ramblin-rose.
I am not a soldier,
Bandaged up and bruised,
I am a the lone cowboy
Pictured and framed.
It escapes the wild warriors
With my heart: dear, forever.
Like a copper pan at the tin store,
Stars in my campfire.
Cyclical moon which bringeth thy sun:
Boil over warm coffee.
Because I love this way,
Where my window-less remains.
Tucked and stowed
And piled high,
Pleasantly delaying
Summer air and little drops
That puddle jump night to sleep.
From every lair come out great worms
Slithering through fresh mud.
Slugs depart on epic journeys
Across deep dark blacktop oceans.
And as all things growing
Most desire
Freshness from great rains,
Morning brings what can be called
A horticulturalists most desirable dream.
I pick upon the hours of time
Like some delectable brandywine
But to my delight
There’s never a fight
When it comes time to dine
My grandmother tells me that roses are beautiful,
That common sense is all around us.
She tells me that stars float on at night and
Clouds make perfect animals
Which change upon a whim.
She has upon her windowsill
An old foot I’ve always admired.
It holds in it (like a steady hand)
Utensils ready for marking.
To its right: new words for every day.
Never a day goes by without
Her graceful way of flipping.
With all her heart the words so dear,
Hold powers of deep providence.
And from that table, when sitting to dine
Upon a chair plumped by two softening cushions,
One can see through a window of far off China mountain.
More importantly, however, a quite a bit closer
In fact – just below her window,
Is a bush grown wild from years
Unceasingly blooming so.
It’s a rose, and she knows
How beautiful it is.
Should you have rolled me into that pixie white gown?
I laughed with the mariners first touch of ground.
Fire is a gentle nature and this is my bed,
Candles sing songs lingering on into eve.
You are the nature and I am the dreamer,
I am the weaver and you are my story.
My delicate folding showed my illument back,
Stark in this darkness which I escaped into dreams.
Your seaman’s hoarseness upon my plumped, splayed curls,
Changing hands with a thousand dusting fairies.
You are the nature and I am the dreamer,
I am the weaver and you are my story.
And this morning dew and fog brings adieu,
Seaman cold thunderstorm, restless I blow the wind.
Boots go away knocking: your only whispers I can hear.
Untying knots and a lover’s foreign spices.
A heart is a weathered blanket
Alone on the porch
Blowing in the wind.
And I can’t see the end.
When we open our hearts
They’re alone for the ride
Like yesterday’s news.
And I can’t see the end.
A cure is buried
Like lines of my heart
Broken and bent.
And I can’t see the end.
Last drops of day amplified
By a sweet fringe of gold
Hovered dangerously close
To skin so tempered
Of a midsummer nymph.
Rings of fire shrieked;
Lost breath halted thought
While the dancer tiptoed about
Like a midnight rehearsal.
A drop of rain touched my nose today
And I bent down amidst my garden,
Which left me thinking to myself
How lovely it was to be alive.
That this was alive.
So as I delicately pulled
Each raspberry I had bent to pick
I understood the message
Was to inhale, exhale.
Upon the brook I sat a while
Whistling my long & lone tune,
I thought I heard a critter come
But it was just the moon.
It echoed off the water so clean
That my heart lept at the thought.
And soon my mind was back again
Amidst this lone lagoon.
In my tarry I carried a pack
Stuffed with my new booty.
Not filled with random this and that,
But of my especial boon.
I held it close to my lone heart
As I breathed in the vista,
And just as I approached depart
I was greeted by a loon
Who whispered my heart a calm.
I knew once more, with no regret
That as I sat and whistled along
It would be time to go home soon.