“In an instant”
Easily,
in an instant,
you could have not been born.
You could have had nothing.
You could have lost
the sun, the sky,
the slow moon ascending,
and the harmony
and flicker of leaves.
You could have lost
the rain’s splash
exciting the soil,
the blue beyond,
and the light
and absence of light.
You could have lost everything.
And I could have lost the same,
never knowing the cure
for thirst in a world without you.
“A song”
I know you are threadbare and worn
with the weary strike of iron
ringing the notes in your name,
And even the tireless minstrel
is tired of his own insistence
on solitude’s graceless strain.
Yet it had been enough,
and the mournful sounds a song,
Had we but moved without motion
in motion through the dawn.
“Your name”
The world was still new,
uncertain shapes and sounds,
when first
you heard your name.
“Lizzy” could have been an apple,
or a butterfly, or a sunset in spring,
but its syllables
became a seed,
the sprout of your center.
Little by little
you grew comfortable
with the sound and the colors
in your name,
its wings sailed
from voice to voice,
crossing
the houses and streets and trees,
making its way
to the peak of a dream.
At the first competition
it seemed the chilly name of another.
It was not yet you,
its essence was untested,
so you went seeking,
searching in weary mirrors,
in questioning shadows,
in solitude,
until you found
its true voice singing
in the slow light of dedication.
It was then it lingered,
and stopped a Blurtso that passed,
thinking it was the echo of an apple,
or a butterfly, or spring.
“Moonrise”
Just above whirl the sparks
and the planets in space.
Their silver tails leave wounds
on the dark glass of the sky.
Tonight the moon mounts
the slow steps of the spheres,
raised like an idol by holy hands,
scaling the edge of the night.
At the summit the light lingers,
awaiting its worldly worship,
then descends, riding on ropes,
borne on the back of the air.
Like a burning crystal,
the moon has been sent for you.
It lights and carries your name
to a place beyond the sound
of the whistle and whirl of stars.