JANUARY slate
battleship
skies dipped in sea pebbles
and old Venice
a still cold
dark as cannon
a tin can day
love as real as air
in windowless space
love as long as smoke
GLANCES
you
with your Vermeer face
and burnt wood mind
you cascade words like
sheaves of paper
my evening glances
ricochet off violins
and window panes
and land like feathers
from a gibbous moon
evanescent
I saw you in a dream
of a fisherman’s sky
collecting lost nickels
from empty pockets
and trading them in
for old bottles
full of sad songs
MOUNTAIN
this half-light of mountain
in the shade of tall leaves
a bell tower of wind and chime
the evening’s lodestar
takes in the full breadth of land
shepherds us north
sure of step and night
a sanguine mother ship
mountain
we sit at your bluffs
and hear the summons
of the bells
and play the sunsets of your
homesick centuries
FEASTS
half-notes and gold dust
gild the flight of morning and
dapple the waking brush
rabbits munch on marigolds
and wink
quail rush by
with large families
catching trains
scented arrows take aim
hoping for ricochets
and ballet
weightless we
court destiny
finding love and
stealing thunder
CELLO PIECES
our years are old and deep
tree roots in a
pennywhistle wind
atoms fall like stars
and play coronets
for what can never be
your voice with its
cello notes and
orphaned melodies
haunts these rooms
and corridors
cracked in tiny pieces of
a broken
celadon
moon
Alien Buddha Press 