Almost

                                                      

                                                      Love made arcs of us,

and as water dreams

of droplets,

we dreamed the perfect circle

and might have found it,

but the curvature we brought,

unfortunately,

could not achieve it.

Unroll your pack;

set up home.

From The Well

 

Far down; a glimmer of light

from inside the earth;

a wonder to our young eyes.

We lowered the bucket

through the ferns and darkness

to collect magic

and drew it up, into daylight:

pristine, icy; we drank

what we believed to be purity.

Her Hair

 

Her Hair

 

Her hair

fell, entwined tresses

down the length of her back,

down past her knees.

Morning sunlight found it

and nested there;

I was at a window

entranced.

It was just a moment,

an interval in the journey of clouds;

it was not yesterday,

nor even twenty years ago

Today I stopped to admire patterns

of run-off water on the strand;

the hair of Celtic goddesses

as will be remembered in stone.

Beneath Our Feet

 

Lives: we think of people.

Life: we think of the distinction

between organisms and inorganic substance.

I walk the beach; it’s littered with shells, billions,

remnants of dead organisms and I marvel.

Barely more than blobs of protoplasm; yet their shells

beautiful, fine as china, now beneath my feet;

an unfathomable scatter becoming sand.

We ask the purpose of life;

I look at these with same question;

the intricacy of the interactions of living things;

their sequestration of carbon, recycling of nurients,

building of habitats; even now fragmenting to sand.

I think of all the beaches worldwide;

and these stars we walk on;

their infinity, if we permit it.

More Revision

Today

Can you spin a cloud onto a stick;

collect sequins of sunlight from a river;

walk the moon’s pathway over the sea?

There are times when happiness might belong

in this list; I thought so today when you cried

and we were not there to put our arms around you.

Happiness seemed very remote just then;

you might as well have tried to fill a jar with blue sky

and I could swear I heard a hollow clank from the universe.