For The Time Being
Why can’t we change
as quickly as an October landscape,
whose air no longer sounds with terns and jays
who have gone off to warmer climes.
It is the fleeing that paralyzes--
Lovers and friends, who have left,
keep us, for the time being, still and lost
in the harsh landscape of our minds.
This personal eclipse -- covered shadows mark us barren as the moon, which in all its phases, ultimately reemerges whole--
Is there anything more joyful
than a full moon in the daytime sky of October,
going from a sliver to fully visible.
Winter Is On Its Way
A tundra of cold settles into the heart,
and we know that winter will walk into the rest of our lives,
and cold, like glass, can shatter and spread
into the tiniest dusty covered corners.
But, the train of winter’s fury also slows and readies
to pull into a station where people disembark
onto a platform of noise and color and shops
that sell warm things like hats and cappuccinos,
and the heart is heard, not silenced
in white space or a snowy blur,
but readies for the thaw.
Possibilities for a Girl on a Dirt Road
In the news, it was a pastoral scene,
what could go wrong, but something did,
the girl on the bike on the dirt road
snatched and unheard of forever,
but what about the flip side of the record,
where the vinyl does not scratch--
now the girl on a bike avoids the ruts,
finds where the sand is solid
and the back wheels do not skid
into scripted disaster,
but glide smoothly past
fields of wildflowers,
and the girl will grow
and learn to call them by name--
aster, periwinkle, Queen Anne's lace,
and have a safe place with an ample table
and a porcelain vase waiting to be filled.
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