Afterlife
At first you could not imagine how
I waited in the shadows.
The sky is blank,
Flesh of no feeling
The sun glowing, spectral,
Rising with the smoke.
A door swings open.
The heavenly music surprises me.
Without invitation, I enter.
Under starry skies, in prairies of
Knee-high corn, I dreamed awake.
Poppies
The poppies smoulder,
Lit matches struck in the dark
Where we brought my sister’s ashes
When her life wicked out.
Each red flower
Is black at the heart
Of every burning
Wide bloody mouth.
Sunlight shines through,
Translucent.
Excitement quivers.
It is Winter here.
Frost waits nearby,
Sharpening his scissors.
Fresh Rain
Fresh rain fell
Onto velvet skin
Beneath an open sky.
I seek shelter in you.
Every stranger
Becomes a ghost passing by.
I harvest the fog,
Bathe naked in the waxing moon.
Sometimes I think I hear
The echo of the storm.
Daydreaming
Thoughts come easily
At dusk when beekeeper’s ghosts
Move through the empty orchard.
That moment before sleep,
Black nor white but
Something in between
Casts it’s spell.
The river of dripping saltwater pearls,
The withered moor,
The ashen lake
Where nothing stirs or alarms,
Where no birds sing.
Night
They came out to
Watch the moon,
A chalky paleness in the sky,
Wet from an evening’s
Snow, gathering shadows
In a field and hoarding them.
Darkness waited
Dimly in the trees,
As a mother
Slowly, slowly
Withdrawing a child
From her breast,
Falling snow
Pale as milk,
The elusive shapes
Of twilight merging,
Haunting, full of
Regret, a cry,
And then silence.
Night swallows all.
Birds at the Burial
Near the riverbank where we
Buried her, I light a candle
And wait, patient as a hunter
Detecting what the beast will do
In the next moment.
Someone, somewhere, will see it.
Barn owls celebrate
Over their cathedral of bones,
Screaming skies clawed with crows.
The man asleep on his lumpy mattress
Has a head full of ghosts and
Sad, erotic dreams.
Gulls rise, small white banshees
Worshipping the sun.
At first you could not imagine how
I waited in the shadows.
The sky is blank,
Flesh of no feeling
The sun glowing, spectral,
Rising with the smoke.
A door swings open.
The heavenly music surprises me.
Without invitation, I enter.
Under starry skies, in prairies of
Knee-high corn, I dreamed awake.
Poppies
The poppies smoulder,
Lit matches struck in the dark
Where we brought my sister’s ashes
When her life wicked out.
Each red flower
Is black at the heart
Of every burning
Wide bloody mouth.
Sunlight shines through,
Translucent.
Excitement quivers.
It is Winter here.
Frost waits nearby,
Sharpening his scissors.
Fresh Rain
Fresh rain fell
Onto velvet skin
Beneath an open sky.
I seek shelter in you.
Every stranger
Becomes a ghost passing by.
I harvest the fog,
Bathe naked in the waxing moon.
Sometimes I think I hear
The echo of the storm.
Daydreaming
Thoughts come easily
At dusk when beekeeper’s ghosts
Move through the empty orchard.
That moment before sleep,
Black nor white but
Something in between
Casts it’s spell.
The river of dripping saltwater pearls,
The withered moor,
The ashen lake
Where nothing stirs or alarms,
Where no birds sing.
Night
They came out to
Watch the moon,
A chalky paleness in the sky,
Wet from an evening’s
Snow, gathering shadows
In a field and hoarding them.
Darkness waited
Dimly in the trees,
As a mother
Slowly, slowly
Withdrawing a child
From her breast,
Falling snow
Pale as milk,
The elusive shapes
Of twilight merging,
Haunting, full of
Regret, a cry,
And then silence.
Night swallows all.
Birds at the Burial
Near the riverbank where we
Buried her, I light a candle
And wait, patient as a hunter
Detecting what the beast will do
In the next moment.
Someone, somewhere, will see it.
Barn owls celebrate
Over their cathedral of bones,
Screaming skies clawed with crows.
The man asleep on his lumpy mattress
Has a head full of ghosts and
Sad, erotic dreams.
Gulls rise, small white banshees
Worshipping the sun.
