I dream of distance,
of miles, of feet, of inches

the long stares down short roads
the short steps that accumulate on the sides of mountains

the winged leaps that do not land
but float to the absent place where clouds waste away

I dream of eternity,
of timelessness, of hours, of seconds, of now

the perfect watch
that sees the perfect heart
the hands that count
away the clock

the cloven feet that step along the path less chosen
horned and woolly, blind and vacuous – up the slope

I dream of space,
of lightyears, of novas and nebulae

the endless nothing between the microns
the long slip that becomes a wish of dust

the gill-less dive that leaves me unbreathing
into the abyss.

In a mess of mortar and brick
trowel and point, bucket and brush,
we lay down a level
until it is all square as it can be.

After hours of hose,
thick wires scouring red clay,
we agree: this is clean.

Dry hands crack. The cracks bleed.
Skin becomes pink and tender,
and  discrete tears puddle
just to prove the point
was not perfect.

Everyone smiles, everyone rejoices,
in this new place, that was shattered
and broken and edgeless.

I would marvel too, but I know
the impropriety of the foundation.

I smile too and wait for it to crumble.

Do you think your tongue so sugared dear
that all are enrapt by the sweetness of your words?
You are not the candy, alas, I fear
you think such things without the truth you are absurd.

Do you think your eyes are chocolate-bitter
that they speak to the little boys you’ve snared?
You are not the candy,  nor the apple fritter
just another hapless fool that love has dared

to push the limits of propriety.
Do you think that you are so pure as sweet?
Even in the whirlwind variety
of your foolish youth, such love is incomplete.

Sugared lips, and candied hips and a crushed walnut
do not true love create
Set back your dreams and girlish schemes
before it is too late.

Oh, My cousin, if I could steal away your every hurt
and let your heart beat more easily,
I would. But this is love.
Love must be felt, endured, grown and lost.

Look at a coin, imagine that it were to flip
and disappear
because it had only one side.

Love is that coin.

My Cousin, if I could tell you some truth
about healing, that would save you this suffering
I would. But this is love.
and the wounds will become more love
if you let them.

Imagine the words, “never again”
hanging on the hilt of a sword over  your heart
every time you speak them, the sword swings lower.

How hard is it to tell the sword,
“Again, swing, again. I love you?”

My Cousin, if I could show you where your true love waits
I would. Oh, yes, I would. But
this is love.
Only patience and kindness and honesty can show you that path.

Imagine a lighthouse, on rocky island,
and the light is fueled by passion and hope and dreams
lost love dims this light and all those ships that come towards you
risk the rocks. Now it is the deepest night
your light is dim, rest. Tomorrow, walk the beach,
watch the sunrise, watch the gulls fight over crabs,
read some poetry and sing sad songs until your heart overflows
and you laugh.

When the night comes again, your love will be saved.
your love will be found.

My cousin, every heart breaks
a thousand ways, a thousand times,
it is no small thing to dream again
of love.

But every love becomes us, more truly and
more truly still. Every passion, every word, every prayer to God,
defines our love, and in every love  we grow more true.

The greatest lie is about the stinger:
They do. Damn, they do, and it hurts when they do.
But first, they fly with a happy buzz.
They swoop and swim through the air.
They hide in the nectary spots,
leap forth again into the sunlight
and sing the song of wings and wisps
of clouds.

The truth is about the gold and the black,
the colors of sunlight and shadow
that define them. In the darkness they do not
exist. In the light, they are the joy of a passive
passing through a pasture, or along a garden’s edge.

In the twilight, gold is not gold, and black is not black
and they are the perhaps that might be there, unknown.

The question that hangs between the truth and the lie
is not a bumblebee or sunshine or darkness. It is the simple why
of love. The aching perfection of a moment of sunshine
before that cloud can become a shadow. Before the darkness
can be imagined there amongst those flowers and that color
and that implied threat of stinging pain.

Alleluia Bumblebee, God hears your prayers loudest of all.

here is the truth of loss
what existed, exists

here is truth of found
what is found, must first be lost

here is the truth of hope
what might exist, must exist

here is the truth of despair
what ends, must first begin

here is the truth of socks
where one exists, so does two.

The wisp of a wannabe flapper with short mousy brown hair wiped away fog from the window. She looked out into her backyard to see the path down which any young woman like her would want to run. She watched the young doe run. She watched the doe disappear when the winds picked up.

She ran her fingers through over her furrowed brow and her scalp. She told herself,”No, no, it’s ok to be bit slow to sit back down.”

“It’s ok,” she told herself as she dropped back down into her worn oak chair. “It’s ok, it’s been an while and the deer’s clearly gone.”

When she was younger, she’d followed that path more times than she could ever count. More times than she would want to count even if she could. But the morning was perfect, and she wanted to forget all those other walks. The morning was perfect, and all she wanted to do was join her cloven-footed friend out in the great somewhere else.

She took a stack of dishes to the sink, and tried looked out that window as she gave each plate a brisk cleaning.

“Goodbye,” she thought. “Good bye deer friend.”

She thought it so loudly, as if she’d never see that doe again. As if the soft brown of her fur would be nothing but a memory and that was that, but the truth was far more mundane and she knew it. She knew that if she waited until tomorrow just after dawn, she’d look out at her apple trees and see the same deer munching away again, even if only for a moment.

She pulled a pack of Pall Malls from her purse, tapped one out and lit it. She pulled the first perfect fog of nicotine into her lungs and let herself go on with a bit of a sputtering shuttering fluttering like an antique lamp.  Cigarettes are cheaper than finding a way to hire a maid, she told herself as she pretended to do a bit of housework to fool herself.

For hours, she sad on the couch, fingering a little hole in the left arm with her pinky and trying not to sob as she worried about hunters killing the deer. A fierce resolve crashed over her. Today was the day.

She dressed in her outdoor clothes – blue jeans, a gray t-shirt, white socks and sneakers. She imagined some 10-point buck hard and ready to deliver his sperm into the most ordinary doe in all the woods.

She got to the door, took a long breath, opened the door and stood there on the breezeless edge of the late afternoon. She shook a little as she listened to a train pass. She took another longer deeper deep breath. She laid a powerless punch into the door frame. She watched a bird – a modest orange bird devoid of tweet or name or perhaps even feet as it flew off into that vast expanse of anywhere.

A tear fell down her cheek, and she closed the door again.

I will never forgive the zebras
for the audacity of stripes
or the sound of their hooves
8,000 kilometers away, atop the dry june grass

I will never forgive them
for the cowardice of being eaten
shedding blood upon the teeth
of the powerful, when the weak would do just as well.

I will never forgive the damned Zebra
for the gutlessness of rapture
the sudden stop before heaven
and the long wait as the winter night grows cold
then colder
still.

I will never forgive them
for the orgasm of the stud
or the braying of the mare
or the want of the foal
for another summer
one more december
without my voice warning them of boomslang
of puff adder, of the sameness
of a cheetah and other cheetah
and another until it becomes clear
that all of the spots are the same
and no clause is retractable on the veldt.

with a flash of orange
a kestrel lifts a tiny mouse
up to the feces stained walls of her nest

her noisy chicks become quiet
as they eat

the remains rot over time
and the smell joins the symphony
of her droppings.

I couldn’t make out what she said, but from the reaction of the cashier, I suspect it was glib. She fixed her collar and paid for the chamois. She glanced at some perfumed called Mystical as she walked out the door past an incoming police officer.

I couldn’t get her out of my head for days, thoughI could remember nothing specific about her except that her hair wasn’t too light and she had long fingernails painted red.

My friend Bob and I were talking over a couple of Buds and some grilled rattlesnake and I tried to explain to him what made her special.

“So let me get this straight, you see some chick in a big chain department stoor, you don’t say a word. Basically, you noticed her butt wiggle and then she was gone?”

“It wasn’t that tawdry.”

“Well, what was it is if you can’t remember anything about her, you didn’t hear her voice, and you can’t even remember her face enough that you think you’d remember her?”

For a minute, I hated Bob. I tried to polish all the soot off my scorched fantasies of this woman, but it was too late. Bob had turned the magical into something plastic. Something without a breath.

A couple of days later Bob gave me a ring and asked how I was doing. There was this mockery hanging in his voice begging me to bring up the woman at the store. But I just said bye and hung up.

I watched suds refuse to parade down my drain. They waited in that midway-place between the sewer and the sky and one by one refused to die without a silent soapy pop.

While they popped, I used a bit of bleach bleach and cold water to pull up a stain from the counter. Then, with my fingers nearly frozen and completely waterlogged, I sat down to read some haiku by Buson.

I was too distracted by the way my hands reeked of dishes and bleach so I gave up trying to read and headed back to the store.

As I walked past, it was the same cashier as the other day spanking down items on the counter and tallying up absurd numbers to share with strangers. The sheer meaninglessness of all of this was plastered on her face, and I knew there was nothing I could do to save her.

I  loitered for a while, bobbed in and out of different departments looking for nothing and no one.

An hour or so later, I left when I realized it was true – she wasn’t there.