A huge thank you to Mark Antony Rossi for publishing three of my poems today on Ariel Chart.

https://www.arielchart.com

 

A Hearse Parked Under A Leafy Tree

 

I never wonder who is in a limo,

but I do reflect on who is the star passenger

in that other long, black conveyance.

 

Like that one over there,

parked under a leafy tree.

 

Having carried:

 

Cowboys who kicked up the dust with their spurred boots.

Teachers with hearts full of dreams for their students.

Physical therapists, who brought new fluency to damaged muscle.

 

Having carried those who died from:

 

The violence of a fire,

The crack of a gun,

The stilled pendulum of life’s ticking.

 

Ready to transport:

 

Those who stood strong until their elderly end.

Those who stumbled and fell in early years.

Those who knew ahead of time where they would be buried.

Those who couldn’t settle on where to settle.

And those who thought they would live forever.

 

A hearse, now still and quiet,

waiting for the next procession.

The Mandala of Healing Memory

 

The lapis lazuli stone

is used to declutter the mind.

It is also the color

of your engrossing eyes,

eyes that make all my thoughts fall forward

on top of each other,

as if the gate of my mind

has come off its hinges.

I’m haunted by thoughts of your songs.

If only the mandala

could spin back just so,

to keep those eyes just as beautiful, 

but rendered less than all-consuming,

and more hugely self-protective for me,

by their distance.

Circadia

 

On a moonless night with only the streetlight’s glare,

between snatches of sleep,

while I lie lightly dreaming under the color of night’s grey,

as the dark’s orchestra of crickets, breeze, and owls play,

laid between the choruses of feral dogs’ howls,

at this time, I imagine a long desert journey

of scorpions, rattlesnakes, and roadrunners across the sands.

I suppose purple mountains growing more royally 

robed with blue’s diffusion into the ether.

I picture swift, streaming dinghies and kayaks leaving silver wakes.

My secrets of earth, sea, and sky, wide and deep and high.

 

I imagine to slowly wake by silent morning stars 

that close their eyes against their twinkle

with the beginning of dawn.

To only hear the gentle tweet of the early birds, they who catch the worms.

 

Yet, looking out open windows, 

while my eyes adjust to the dim, 

I see steadily growing candlelight within the clouds,

as the map of my reality takes me down speedily brightening streets.

 

Forgotten reveries are replaced,

by visions of despondent beggars drunk at dawn,

the early morning screech of an overly enthusiastic jazz trombonist 

playing urban taps for an exhausted, overworked populace,

trucks’ engines thunderously rumbling as the noise of giants racing.

 

Circadia, please pull me along swiftly

to a moonless night where I lie lightly dreaming….