IF

He asks When?
as if it were all
a matter of timing,
as if the immediacy
or lack of it
somehow really mattered.
She would never ask that
but would want
to know who.
She's far too polite
to ever ask why
preferring to replay the scene
in her eye's mind
allowing for a thin
veil of mystery.
each wants to know
how the other found out
but neither has
the slightest idea
where this all began.

SEEING RED

Tomorrow morning
I will step outside
and on the Austrian Pine
hope to see
the crimson flash
of the cardinal's wing
foretelling the day to come.
We will bow
each to the other
and await the sun.
Even the squirrels
will pause and take notice.
This is my fondest hope
for I have grown weary
of the egotism
the self-preening
of the crows each morning.
How dare they
act so human.

PAUSE

and there are
those rare days
when the less
said is
the better
and this
is

APOLITICAL?

The space between

want and need

is at once a vast gulf

and the width of a hair,

much the same as that

separating luck and greed.

It is only in the eye’s mind

that the gap is insurmountable

and we give up hope

that those who live

in the land of want

will ever look across

the border of tears

and truly see those

who are doomed

to toil endlessly

in the land of need.

EQUINOX

As night settles in
and the clouds grow uncertain
of their intentions,
it is hard to realize
that a boundary
is silently crossed
and summer has
retreated into the past
leaving a new season
in its wake, harder
to know that tomorrow
we will awaken into
an autumn that at first
seems no different
than her mother, only
her promise of fall-
ing leaves soon painting
her in her true colors.

ETERNITY

The veggie burger settles
in a pond of bad cabernet.
The clock refuses to move
and here the arrow
is a stop sign and time
will not go against its tide.
She is home, Mystie
on her lap decrying
my absence, as I bemoan
the same from the vinyl
seat in the aging terminal
awaiting the flight
to freedom and eight years
of joy suspended for a day
that grow more painful with
 the non-passage of time.

THAT WHICH GOES UNSAID

 -- To my Boddhisattva whose name is light

Her finger, tracing my cheek

Her eyes, my last sight 

          as night enfolds me

Her smile welcoming

          both the sun and I

Her shiver, as I trace

          her spine beneath the quilt

Her laugh, heartfelt, at a joke

          best left untold

Her joy at hearing

          what was said

          and what was not

He words, bringing

          laughter and tears

          by turns, but which

          no one wishes to forget

Her lips, their whisper

          that I carry from the house

          and through my day

Eight years

          the impossible has been real

          the undeserved offered in abundance

          the unattainable in hand

That which goes unsaid

          but is always on the tongue

          and within the heart.