Upriver



Whitecaps on the water
cut between the season’s embers,
the wind whipping down from the north,
breathing cold

Rumor has it that
death and sleep are but distant cousins –
watch a streetlight strain itself to illuminate
an overcast morning

A lady in work boots walks,
coffee in hand, her hair blown in a gust,
determination defining each stride she takes...
making an impression in the moment

Clouds align themselves in rows
marching across the valley behind a windswept flock
as it folds back upon itself not once, but twice –
an orderly dance through chaos

There is this illusion that
there is nothing left when we are no longer here to see it,
much as we assume that everything we witness
must therefore be real

A hedge burns, flame red, where it watches
over a lane set aside for things that don’t really matter
to pass along, devoid of expectation
and external observation

But seasons weren’t placed here
to be like street signs, laid out
to assist distracted drivers
(albeit it is a good conceit)

And there are those who are dying,
even as I write these words,
no less touched by them than those
who live on, never reading them

Each wave, ripped by the
winter’s coming chill, shares so much
with those that follow it...
and so it must be.

The Gypsy Dance




You should dance
a gypsy dance
tonight
and I should
build the fire
to watch you by,
to sit until scorched
and then dare myself
not to move
until the morning breeze
lifts away my ashes

There is passion
in the wine
tonight,
cradled in the
tear shaped bosom
of its glass,
a potent sorrow
crying out to be consumed
blood
to sweat
to steam
to crawl
inside of you
and melt
within the music,
the swirling, throbbing tempo
coming banging
banging, banging
with no edges,
just the driving
dripping heat
that begs to swallow thirst
and drown in the
parched and arid
chambers of my heart

You should dance
that gypsy dance
and I
should sip of it
and ache the haunted
ache of shadows
as the bow cries
across the string
and every movement
bleeds its passion
until the flame
implodes and all
I know as mine
is gone

You should dance
that gypsy dance
tonight
so that I might awaken
drenched with fever
not knowing
whether this exists
in this world
or the next
or that it matters when
the cold distance
cannot squelch
the embers from your fire
and I know that I
will feel the music again
dripping blood
and that I will sit
smoldering in the heart
of unquenchable love
and that I will
watch you
as you dance
as you dance


I will watch you
as you dance.

The Garcia Moon

The Garcia Moon is coming,
it is half-hidden tonight as it
dances behind the rush of
clouds painting their way across
the silver sadness of the nighttime sky

The second night of August is
written within a song you can
almost feel for the fact that it
is missing, it belongs to those clouds
and that sky, its moon and its wind

There is so much of the human heart
that yearns for that which is more
than human – and so I say that
if I see it in you I will love you for it
and that will be enough – that alone

And when the ghost of love pulls
full around and lifts another gentle soul
from the face of this earth – let it be
no less special than my own, for my time
will come and I can leave only love behind

We are born of it, live our lives
around it, and all too often lose it
to distrust – so helpless. Helpless,
lonely and cold beneath a distant moon
as it watches us, watches us and wonders why

She came and she will go
asking us only what we know.

Cobblestones

Cobblestones



Every thought, every word,
each and every morning
cast, like stones along
a riverbed, awaiting
winter’s icy chill

Each one a reminder
with edges worn smooth,
traces of more solid things
once crumbled, and then scattered
in humbled anonymity

And the water rushes by
until the day freezes
so sharply that everything
lies hidden beneath an
opaque sheet of creaking ice

Waiting for other days
and other mornings,
other thoughts and other words
to come tumbling by,
still glowing in significance.

July 13

Mom is 86 today...

Misplaced Letters



Down in the middle of
whatever might have happened,
where even ambiguities
get all muddled up,
someone placed some words
into an envelope –
shook it once or twice
and shoved it in the mail

It was an especially foggy morning,
even the mist didn’t know
where to go,
one in which the patterned steps
of a carrier’s feet
disappeared into the confusion
and, with that, all was lost

There’s a sea of scattered
leafs out there:
rocks, limbs and human garbage,
things both tossed and lost –
and, out among it all, there must lie
a misplaced bundle of decaying letters,
scrambled thoughts
that never found their way.

The Constant Shade of Blue



He couldn’t remember whether he had counted his steps that day,
crossing the threshold into the constant shade of blue…
or whether the weather had yet known him well enough to ignore him
as he let go

Whereas he had once tripped lightly across the sins of summer,
construing only as much as his lack of discretion might allow,
he now watched as anything and everything that had ever meant anything to him
floated in the air

And every scope of every distance ever measured lay disarmed
amid the relative obscurity of the desires by which it had been formulated,
each and every item of existence standing infinitely separate and distinct
from itself

“Let it go,” he told himself. “Let it go just far enough beyond your grasp to elude you,
even as you earnestly stretch to touch the farthest reaches of its other side,
for nothing is ever as real as we might want it to be
except for this

Too few lessons are ever learned in any event,
dream light skips across a river of ice,
leaving its shadows draped in crystalline blue
beyond its jagged edges

He turned back around, only to stare, face-forward, into his future,
contemplating, if for only an instant, his inability touch anything devoid of shape,
and then, at last, letting out a final long and lonely sigh
of contentment

Traces of his steps still rest there, where once a door opened to allow him through,
they wait for the wind that will come, in its own time, to gently lift them up and away,
knowing, all the while, that every particle that sculpts the endless sky
is no less meaningless.

Groucho grew into an old dude at the old Yankee Stadium one day...

what's four years?

18 people have stopped by in that time - better slow the pace...