shala runs through the trees
singing as she goes, oh
what is wonderful today?
shala brushes through the wheat,
long and thin and rich, seeking
what is wonderful today.
shala watches sparrows fly, leaping
limb to limb, and calling, see!
what is wonderful today!
shala plucks the petals from the bud,
counting, smelling, humming
what is wonderful today.
shala runs along the fence,
feet pounding out the future and
what is wonderful today.

she leaves, sidles out the front door
and into the storm:
the thunder howls down around
her ears, touches fine hair:
she looks at grey clouds seeking
individual raindrops.
i am crouched inside, sides against
the whitewashed walls, feet couched
on fading linoleum:
i am watching her eyes grow big
and reflect bright bits of electricity
in the gaping sky:
i am watching her back slowly
feet-first in through the door and
shut it slowly:
the smell of outside permeates her hair.
she has brought the rain inside.

sunlight makes me dream
makes me hazy and illuminates
the desperation i have for you—
white around the edges but
dust, dust, dust is all around.
in through the window
like water boiling over,
bubbling up in the glass to
find the motes and
pick them out and
push them around; desperate dust,
seeking a landing place
(regret for being airborne).
it floats and seeks, pushed
by any passing wind,
each particle so pushably focused
on the inward:
your name, your name, your name.
i thirst, the way that dust
sticks only to wet, bonded
to the oasis of dreaming
about your wetted lips being mine,
your name becoming mine,
identity and existence at once
in motion, and still.
how strange!

democracy dream, joyful and callous:
two centuries later, the realization that
a functioning democratic republic
must be free to let its failing members
fail, to let the meritocracy sneak in
around the edges and determine the daily:
who sees the doctor, who gets the new
hip or knee or heart. shabby urbanity
glowing in light pollution, the white limestone
that houses great ideas and shallow men
and no solutions; night in dc only serves
to shade the homeless behind the monuments.

so slowly the days go now,
all i see are images, like projections
on the side of a fast train
that someone else is on.
each car a frame, and the soundtrack
the running of metal on metal,
the squeaking of the track:
like some old home movie,
slightly yellowed with age and love.

the first sweet kiss,
at night in a high school parking lot;
the dreaming, taking over years
and long mornings at work;
the finality of 14 karat love!
bubbles blown as we run down the church steps;
exhausted but smiling for a newborn boy;
a toddler grasping the edges of a table for balance;
spelling tests with stickers on the fridge.

each car a flash of color,
and the deepening sobriety of love:
the film peels up at the edges,
the colors fade a little around the faces,
and the train just keeps running.
even if all i get to do right now
is watch, even if we are still in the middle
of the years of dreaming:
the images are enough, the dreaming
is enough to keep me sated.
someday, we'll buy tickets for a faraway town
and wait for the train to pull up to the station
belching steam and passengers.
we'll have the car to ourselves,
blue seats and wide windows,
and we'll watch the wheat fly past,
and the barley, and the barking dogs held by
tiny stationary people.

no day could dawn bright enough,
or open with enough sunlight, to shine or even
mirror the way that we glow. each morning, each
afternoon spent inside your face is
too precarious to remember,
too precious to forget.
even when we are old, even when
rheumatic eyes and creaking joints
whisper painfully to each other,
hang your hat on my bedpost, dear,
and leave your shoes on the mat;
then taste me on your lips.

next week, next month, next year
or in the next lifetime, we'll reach that dream of
marriage, babies, white picket fences.
and no matter how many times i say it,
there is always room for once more:
timeless. transcendental.
especially in these days when words
run dear, my love, you'll never have to ask
where my heart lies at night.
here, next to yours, and beating in time:
a counterpoint that never fades,
teasing rhythm from each year of life.

In cities, silence rules. In awkward ways,
the silence creeps along the edge and makes
its presence known. Through all the tides and quakes
of man, the cars and shrieks and fights, these days
consume the sounds. New York becomes a tomb,
LA a muted curse: the people swim
in deep, cold tides. The water dulls, makes dim:
stifles voices, cuts through prayer too soon.
She moved from farm to town, and left her meaning
clear; no more could country quiet bind
her aching heart and feet. She dropped her name,
assumed a face, and walked among the living.
Youth let her seek a life that's hard to find
when cities lie silent, dull, and seek no fame.

where i was born

where i was born, a calm and soothing stillness
pervades. white walls, beige carpet, and the tea
that whistles only a little in the pot when it is
warm.
where i was born, the sunlight is filtered
through slatted white blinds. it sneaks in through
gaps under carefully shut doors into the cool dim
space.
where i was born, all things are sterile and in
perfect order, each object to its place: the
colors begin to blend, but the lines remain
clear.
where i was born, the cieling fan circled so
soft and lazy that it might as well have been
off. each blade turned slowly, a rotation of
silence.
where i was born, the view from the window used to
be filled with wheat and chaff. now only weeds have
grown up around big grey houses, and we have lost our
past.

my martyr complex says
you can't know, you can't feel, while
my sanity and reason dictate a return
to sleepy disorientation.
break my concentration:
a startling streak of starlight,
blue across the sea,
red across the cup of wine.
seek!
i am not so far away as once i was.
remember when writing in
free verse used to break rules?
remember when we used to stare at the moon
and wonder who would touch it first?
remember russia,
all things combined in its name:
all snow, all ice,
all stellar intergallactic interpolated regional distances
from point a (you) to point b (me).
build your fire,
a signal on a pyre or a city on a hill,
waft smoky messages at me
from miles away:
silence the antagonies that shine bright
in the sky, daring me to
hope or trust or love or live;
dare me to sing, in chorus with the pleiades,
dare me to hunt, alongside orion,
dare me to ring bright and true and firey
the return to alone.
if all your gorgeous words should bottle up
and float away,
i'll still walk the beach.
with or without, i am never solo
with as much memory as i have stored.
a flattened W in the sky, i'll sit immovable
(not immobile)
till true love's first kiss
shakes flattery out of the folds of my dress.
i sigh, i wish, i wake:
we are nothing more than humans,
and life is not a reverie.

a tidal wave of soundlessness swooping
down unsuspecting, a riptide sweeping a child
out to sea, the tornado that
appears out of nowhere in the country
sky: the tsunami of silence that
deafens as it rushes, wailing and shrieking,
down the echoing hallways of consiousness.
save me, save me, save me--
i am too young and small for this sort of
complete desolation, a desert of self and
arid solitude, i am too well-rooted in
humidity and the sweating swamps of companionship
for this sun-burning smoke-signaling
heat-loving atmosphere. the hope of you
in weeks or months is a long, dark mirage
grainy on the horizon, and always far away.

impending absence
is enough to kill. your loss
is hot, visceral.