Laminated
Sliding freshly
Printed paper
Heavy from vibrant
Color ink
Into plastic sleeves
To slip through
The heated press
Laminated to
Seal the dream,
The process,
The presentation
Do I look like a professional
Yet
You’re my favorite ghost.
No matter what you did,
I still love you the most:
forgiving and naive like a kid.
I was a child when I knew you
and a child when I left.
But, you were young, too
saying those words, leaving me bereft.
The thing is, I don’t miss you.
Not anymore.
I miss being loved, that’s true.
I miss being cared for.
I don’t miss you,
I just miss your taste in songs
and how you flew
far above to prove them wrong.
Though you lay in bed with me
I’d rather sit here alone with my cup of coffee
Solitude
I tip toe quietly through my house
As if a mouse wishing not to disturb
I prefer the quiet and my thoughts
Over lying in bed your heavy arm draped over me
I sometimes wonder why I invite you here
Why I invite you inside of me
When I prefer myself over you
Over us
And that I prefer my mornings alone
Still and gentle
Not of the hussle and bustle of preparing for a guest
I’ve certainly grown to understand
You also don’t need to be here
That desire has flown away
Drifting past the morning clouds
Up to the morning sun
At its brightest light
That’d I’d rather have join me
My morning alone
Deep in the folds of the mountains old,
Where the rhododendrons bloom,
And the fog drifts low through hemlock groves
Like spirits from the tomb,
There walks a beast the elders know,
Though few have seen him clear—
A stag with antlers made of moonlight
And eyes of amber fire.
They call him the Whisper Stag at dusk,
When the whip-poor-wills begin,
For he speaks in the wind through the chestnut leaves
And knows the hearts of men.
Some say he rose from the mountain roots
When the world itself was young,
When the rivers carved the ancient hills
And the first songs yet unsung.
His hooves leave no mark on the forest floor,
Nor break the winter snow,
And where he passes, barren ground
Will bloom and greenly grow.
An old coal miner once got lost
When the darkness closed around.
The mountain swallowed every trail,
No landmark could be found.
He wandered three long nights alone,
Till hunger made him weak,
When through the laurel came a glow
Upon the distant creek.
There stood the stag beside the stream,
His antlers crowned with stars.
He turned and walked through shadowed woods
Beneath the moon’s white scars.
The miner followed silently,
Though fear rode at his side,
Until he saw his cabin lamp
Shining warm across the hillside.
When he turned back to thank the beast,
The creature was not there—
Only a single silver hair
Caught in the mountain air.
Now folks still tell the tale at night
By woodstoves burning bright,
And hunters lost on the ridge
Pray for that ghostly light.
For if your heart is true and kind,
And respect the mountain’s ways,
The Whisper Stag may guide you home
Through the cold and foggy haze.
But those who take more than they need,
Or wound the hills for gold,
May hear his voice among the trees
And feel the mountain’s cold.
So tread with care where shadows rest,
And listen when winds sigh,
For the Whisper Stag still roams the peaks
Beneath the Appalachian sky.
My mother has been waiting for something to hatch.
Her clipped wings, her circling brain.
I was her idea, once, she says.
A shell she held to the lamp,
her warm yellow,
her thick albumin.
My flutter cast shadows
that she craved,
a place she could hide.
Instead, I emerged incandescent.
My mother exhaled and released me.
Three seasons later, I returned to find her
shivering beneath antiseptic fluorescent buzz.
I held her to the lamp.
She was my idea once, too.
My best shell, broken.
My warm yellow, my sick albumin.
There’s a fight at graduation
of the ostrich who couldn’t walk
at the Reteti Reserve in Northern Kenya
until the Samburu keepers
added their paces to his.
Long’uro the elephant
lost a portion of his trunk
when he fell in a cistern as a baby.
He learned to eat like a cow.
The orphan Lentile won’t
stay around long at Reteti.
Release comes soon
among these reticulated.
It was cold;
too cold to ride the Harley.
I persevered with
frozen hands
almost those of a corpse.
I don’t know who you are
or what you were running from
in your white Dodge Ram
taking the curve too fast
in the wrong lane.
I don’t know why cops were chasing you
on a Tuesday night in April.
All I know is I was cold.
I drove slow.
I was on the motorcycle;
paid attention to the road.
In a split second you careened
through the red-light intersection
pebbles flying from your tires
incandescent hi-beams
illuminating terror in my eyes.
My body leapt into action
before the serrated shard
of paralyzing indecision
could drive its way home.
In an instant
that stretched and stretched
a sticky hand from my childhood
slowly pulling off glass
I engaged both brakes smoothly
shifted down— fourth to first
buffeted from your slipstream wake
I could have reached out
touched your headlight.
I pulled to the shoulder
both feet firmly down
on a two-foot grooved
safe haven.
I exhaled
my breath, perchance,
one of my last
fogged my visor.
I took off my helmet.
It was cold.
I collected my thoughts
grateful for the respite from the wind
I headed home
to the warmth of my family and my bed
my life yet to live.
Today was meant to be a sonnet
about colors, light, and the
way both faded away with
childhood dreams.
I wrote it as I fell into sleep
last night, head resting
upon muted purple pillow,
and received a dream.
I was a prince in the Colloseum,
meant to free my people, beat
swords into plowshares, and
lead them to brilliant golden day.
I asked for a sign
so long ago I don’t remember when
or why
11:11 on glowing cellular screens
222 on the car number plate in front of me as I drove home
444, 1515, 123 and 321
Stalking me until I listen
