Posts for June 18, 2026 (page 3)

It’s not written on paper. 
It could never become flat,
a two dimensional apparition,
a ghost floating past us
like history lessons ignored,
like so many smiles forgotten
by our roadside of dreams and nightmares,
of sweetness and sickly longevity,

wild like riding across an American plane
bareback on a palomino’s shoulders.
I swear it was a different set of lungs
that sucked in air and pushed out sound
when I spoke it, a word that sounded
familiar and yet had no meaning
until it breached my lips.

Oh God,
          I cried,
                    Oh God,

this gift and there is no where to store it.

And the most beautiful word in the world
vibrates in my throat
and in the air around you and I,
and then, like all beautiful things,
it is gone.

I called you on my way home from work
to keep you company on your long drive north
I listened as you caught your first glimpse of the lake
waving hello to you and welcoming you

stand here while the sun falls
paint your mind in sky colors
foist those opinions on anyone
walking past and I’ll pull up
a piece of dirt and plop down
beside you to commiserate
to dream to hope to hold
onto the night until morning
breaks and we’ll go inside
draw the shades to block
the day so we can pretend
it’s evening again when
things seem easier to face

She asks
What does it mean to heal
I stare      impassively
Rest chin upon knuckles
Expel breath from beaten body
Tongue walks barefoot across  cracked lips
Heart flutters like an autumn leaf 
Falling onto the rain-soaked ground  

I cannot answer her question  

I stand outside myself
Watching my mind      body      spirit
Strike blows against one another
Like drunken revelers in a bar brawl  

Death is inevitable
I will not leave here     alive  

I faintly recall what rest looks like
Before chemo slathered me with fatigue
Even with a searchlight
My brain cannot find words        TBIs
A tsunami         waves of tears
Erodes my safe place       my parents die  

Yet I still hear my father’s words
You are a fighter     you do not quit
Loop like a song on repeat  

Maybe healing looks like
Staying in the ring
Wiping every trace of blood     sweat     pain
From a face stained with tears  

Maybe healing is just surviving the fight  

she scoured the beach every morning 
for the perfect treasures
the ones that woud leave deep impressios on her heart
each shell choosen carefully with a purpose
often turned into mementos she would create 
sharing with those she loved so dear 
they were all different in ma ny ways 
you see the ocean had put then through the test 
crashing on and off the shore 
something in each one would catch her eye
soon to be added to her collection of summer art.
a way to share a piece of her heart .

We lived beside a bridgeless branch that flooded
the whole time I was a kid. Down a canopied path,
we went through, or went around.
No bridge. Before me, maybe,
my parents remember
their wood bridge. Perhaps swept away
in between the years. It’s squat concrete now,
for all it’s worth. Just a low meander
in a gully in a thicket. Freshwater bivalves
and bluetipped black butterflies. 
Angry black crawdads
and a solitary water snake. 

But we were baptized there: I remember
coming up gasping in a big white tee:
the place I used to play made new,
echoing of frogs and foreign Holiness tongues,
my mother’s.

Low and gray high water.
Branches from the branches,
somewhere between ditch, stream, and river.

Eating a peach in sunlight
is the purest expression of freedom
I know 

Before dementia began to erase
his memories of his mother,
so beautiful in her lacy 1920’s
wedding dress, or his tall

broad shouldered, tuxedo clad
father. Before his earliest memories
of being the beloved first born 
grandson grew pale and paler, 

he collected photographs
labeled each in neat dark
handwriting, gave us the gift
of knowing what he’d soon forget. 

This morning’s like a mountain burning,
snowy peaks subliming to steam.
The clouds, lightning stricken,
still tinged orange, linger in cornflower
fields.  In the wake
of the storm, God smiles in the firmament.

“What an imaginable sadness,”
her comment read.

She meant un-imaginable,
but the accidental omission
makes the sentence true.

There is hardly a limit
to what we can imagine.

If, for example, I described to you
in vivid detail, say,
a giant rainbow beetle—

its black marble eyes,
three sets of legs,
front set slightly serrated,

growing from a dome-shaped,
iridescent exoskeleton
(electric green, violet, & gold)
alight in the brilliant sun—

you could picture it, right?

It’s right there
in your mind’s eye.

But what would you see,
I wonder, if you allowed me
to describe for you
the shape of my sorrow,

its height &
impressive weight,
its texture, its many
changing colors.