Fear Not to Tread

Roll the tricycle wheel barrel
into the garden. Fear not
to tread on green grass.
Stumble into the harvest,
diamonds of turnip and
tall men's arms of rhubarb.
Hold open the welcome gate.
Feast with your dewy eyes.

Pearls

Fog rolls out its soft moist filter
Gold leaves gleam
Wet sidewalks glow
Silver white cars release faint streams
I walk slowly
Afraid to shatter a pearl of a day

Last Week

the days stretch and fold
like fans against dry heat
my body yearns for fog
and drops of rain that fall relentlessly
for hours
the drops that fall here are too sparse to wash the dust from flowers

Into the Core: Many Pilgrims Here

Hand turning the lathe of the poem
in the furnace. Feeling the heat.

License to burn away the irrelevant.
Permission to breathe life into the core.

Dark

At times the dark
is self imposed.
The argument,
a summer storm;
lightning as you 
sit alone inside 
your car.

Horizon is but distance.
Windshield as armor.
Lightning that will hit
or miss. Sometimes 
the dark is 
self imposed.

Requiem

we say remember
remember but soon forget
stillness repose thought
escape into evening
fade into dream
no time for memory in morning

Enduring Vertigo

In your right ear, Mother, impacted lymphatic fluid
roars, sings to you the familiar strains of Carousel
and the carnival barker 
absent until the end when
he comes back to earth to bring his daughter a star.