Bird

He designed the heart to be a bird.
A simple specimen
Pumping song
Into the corners of the body.
The capillaries
A near match
To the rush of wings.

And when love breaks
Through the tender coating,
He meant each fiber to flutter
And beat,
As though it were suddenly preparing
To rupture the ribcage
And fly away.
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December

The snow has come tonight
And covered the balconies
With winter’s ruins.
36 miles away
The desert sleeps
In a core of steady smoke
And I refuse to rest.

This is the season of the dead,
Of the slow rising spirit
And gestating seed.
The season when ghosts appear
On the outer fringe of memory,
And the living walk
In frigid coats of fear.

This is the season
When one can hear
The crow-cry of the earth,
And the terrible tapping
Of little black spiders
As they begin to weave
Their ritual webs.
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A Modern Death

And were you prepared to die?
Trapped inside that perfect scheme
Your reason painted?
The great white bird of your soul
Weighed down by your faith in gravity.
For you there was no other side,
No continuum,
Just a flash…
A steady trudge…
A flash…
Then nothing.
God was just a hermit’s dream
And never that kernel inside yourself,
Life was just a waning light
And never luminosity.
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Metamorphosis

In the great and lonely light
I aim to waken,
Arms outstretched
With the weight
Of budding wings,
The curve of wind
Around my waist.
We do not dream
As an act against reality
But as a way of planting seeds.
To merely live is not enough
Lift those arms in adulation!
Giving back to the world
The good, soft stuff of life.
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By The Lake

Water is as sensuous as skin
Stretching its blue body across
The naked earth,
Shimmering at the touch
Of dream-white sails
In the deep heart of summer.

From this I learn the heavy hand
Of fragility,
Boats bowed in swooning dissolution,
Rocks jutting, tooth-like, through the dark,
Sweet birds that skim the surface
Not knowing
How wings are related
To a drowned man’s bones.
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Music

Today I sit in the partial darkness
Softly stringing my instrument
And bowing deep before the music
I await.

This where it all begins;
Silence around my fingers,
The wind, all whispers, in my ear,
The grave internal beat
Continuously pounding.

Is this too where God began?
Not with smoke or fire,
Not with vindictives or rage,
But with a slow hum inside
His heart?
A rustling, like wings arising?
An outcry, like the voice of joy?

And did he form in the metaphor
Of his mouth
That initial booming sound
Which spread its wings
And sailed down the centuries
Breaking here and there
Into the hands of Mozart?
Into Dylan’s bleeding voice?
Into the sad, side street sax?

The same sound that continues to sail
Right into my room
Where I sit
Piecing it together
As though by grasping a single star
You could possibly understand
The mystery of light.