My mind wanders these days, in the familiar space between us, between yesterday and tomorrow. Here, in this now, when the day is unfolding beautifully, I feel more alive than I did yesterday, than I will tomorrow.
And throughout this dawn, when aliveness is the sun, while you lie peacefully dreaming, I reach toward you. From your breath that draws my hand upon your chest, where it rests and lingers on the quiet lifting.
For I will never know the moment it passes; it will go into the wheeling hands of memory. My fear: that you will forever be etherized in the tenderness of my heartbeat.
Here, in this now, when our breathing aligns under a new morning sky, I drum that heartbeat against your chest.
You arise, opening your eyes, and my fear passes. Where it goes remains unnamed. Further, in the distant reaches of your eyes, I see not the sun but the flowering of your soul. From the feet of crows to the crease around your nose, and the freckles in between.
Dawn-kissed and heavy-eyed, you slip like liquid through my ribs and still my heart, squeezing me close and retreating back into little death.
I rise through a softness
that doesn’t belong to morning~
a pale, suspended hush
and time has loosened its grip
and everything waits.
After anesthesia,
the world returns in fragments:
a voice shaped like water,
light bending without edges,
my own name drifting toward me
as if unsure where to land.
I am neither here nor gone,
just floating in the seam
between forgetting and recall,
held by a gentleness
I didn’t know I needed.
Then breath finds its rhythm.
Then the room gathers itself.
Then the body remembers
how to be a body again.
And I open my eyes
to the simple miracle
of being welcomed back~
slowly, quietly,
as though waking
were a kind of grace.
aroma of coffee tickles my insides with delight
I am a dangerous dream,
might I add an influx of disdain on your judgements of me,
Distant mirrors dancing in the image of coddled leaps towards your faith,
Turned to shadow, staining my internal bed once clean,
Intern I sprouted wings for flying far from thee,
Your image I flay,
You’re becoming a memory,
I am a dangerous dream yet not as deadly as thee,
Running in molten thought for the melting of me,
Dancing all the while slaying my prophetic dreams,
In an instant turning like a page for wiping the slate clean,
I see through you now,
yet to you, I’ve become unseen,
All your mischievous doings found ashened and wrinkled never reaching me,
You are a dangerous vision,
A weakened image,
A comedic nightmare,
I remain a dangerous dream…
How wakes the Dream
When the dawn breaks?
The distant crow,
The vestige o’ertakes;
Fields of green and fertile row—
The sounds of the city o’erthro’
The Dream flitters toward the window
Dissolving in sparkles of light,
Round the curtain’s glow.
What the day portends, we should not know,
We make brave ourselves and off we go.
To fight the fight, to sleep another night,
And dream a Dream of soft glowing sunlight,
The field we tend of our own will, and might
And the quaint little home and puffing chimney white.
Be still Dream and let me hold thee,
And behold a life that was meant for me,
For when I wake thou shalt flutter away
Midst the noises of another moiling day.
Dawn drifts in on quiet feet, brushing the world with silver breath;
morning gathers its scattered light, stitching calm through waking fields;
I stand still and listen—how gently the day remembers me.
At first, the purple sunshades hide where dreams cling,
the mind is distracted by how night's feeling,
it drifts along asleep on soft feathered wing.
Now, crimson blood spurts were shapes are annealing,
form re-appears, through razor sharp, edges and seams,
the self slowly stirs, to begin the healing.
Red ochre breaks through, streaming in bright light beams,
piercing the veil, as purpose begins to rise,
shaking the cinders to scatter ash-gray dreams.
Orange inflames the will behind shut eyes,
to rush right in, to show what it held on hold,
sending hot flames aloft, to lighten dark skies.
Yellow crowns the day-break with buttercup gold.
The mind and soul, now awake, can stand up bold!
The gentle morning showers are washing the face
of my garden waking her up from a long needed sleep
feeling the sun’s warmth she’s opening her eyes
Seeing the tree’s pregnant branches she knows
that soon they will deliver the hundreds of leaves
that will provide shade for her tender plants
the plants’s feet beneath the earth are providing
needed nutrients to feed her many perennials
soon I will gather tools to free them from weeds
my garden knows I am her keeper and will help her
my cat follows me around looking for lizards and
birds he knows soon they will gather round my feeders
I will soon be filling them with sunflower seeds
I saw a humming bird circling my red feeders I
need to wash and clean them adding sugar water
soon more will arrive tired from their journey knowing
I have a place for them to rest and recuperate I will
be drinking ice tea watching them from my porch
oh Nature thank you for continuing providing the needed
season despite our shameful treatment of polluting
your precious environment which serves to sustain us
Wake!
Timeless dawn,
Lights praying divine,
Messaging eternally,
Devoted to peaceful day,
Reflecting our grace,
Forever
Loved.
upon waking
no upon the waking
this waking neither first nor last
cold floor
a warm bulb shivers
the alley cat
still feral
counting its own lives
already half made of sound
arriving before it arrives
casts what your february
in its orange persistence
cast before
the hour of the lamp
is standing without you
one thought
and the thought that will not come
something there
has sunk its canines into
the syllables
your syllables
syllabub curdled
frothing
the syllabus
your mother birthed you with
wet and new
red-ink margins
not rehearsing them
no never rehearsing
conducting them slowly
as an orchestra pit must
when all the musicians have gone home
dry and gone
and no one answers the downbeat
and no one
and no one
two three four
the downbeat has no one left to strike
you lift your hand
the cat walks out of the sound it made
already elsewhere
leaving where it will return
leaving before it has left
Falling, soft as hope
Whispers of light, calming souls
Clean morning, so still
Obscurity broken midst night visions
Haunting evil thrust in flight amongst stars
Sleep will not come tonight
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
go back to
sleep.
The World
is
worse for
wear,
without
us
worrying
about it.
Crisp apple,
ripen
later.
Wake Me Softly
~~~~~~~~~~~
waking in a dream
again and again
discarding the shell of what was
for a figment of what is
distant vista eagerly awaited
the naked truth, dearly dreaded
show me not what is real
show me what could be
when you are a dreamer
you just never know
imaginary dreamscapes
fantastic lucidity of delusion
prestigious fortune of grit
when blood, sweat, and tears
and mere passion
not only fall short but
they will never be enough
blind faith in the gamble
my hand is strong
but one shy of flush
a bell pierced the haze
in my wake all that I see
is the awkward silence in between
a furrowed brow and dirty fingernails
the mind it boggles
that when the ground floor hits
I've fallen asleep
5 more minutes
then wake me softly
waking on dew
young magnolias rise
from strokes of tinseled light
each bloom becomes a forest --
in watercolor gold
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