The heat hangs heavy
Like a wet wool blanket

Will this red light ever change?

Finally green

Speed up as much
As the other cars allow
The wind feels cool
On the back of my neck
A false sense of relief

Gotta keep moving
Miles and miles to go
Hoping for a little respite at sundown
And praying for rain

We left sailors in Bergen disappointed,

took the bus on roads that wound,

shaped like the space between

the restless sea and rising cliffs.

Next, a wave-rocked boat-ride up the fjord,

thanks to a farmer really named Jon Brun,

then a hike back to the seashore overlook

on a path along the table-top mountain.

Rock and sparse grass beneath us,

we sat on the edge, between worlds,

mountains marching to the clouds,

water rolling to define the flat horizon.

Giggled. Held hands. Called our names

to wonder when they echoed together.

Whispered our secrets though alone,

declared our love and happiness as one.

Terrified of falling, of life and of death,

I sat there because you were with me,

tiny me on the map of new universes,

making me feel safer than ever before.

(after the 1927 illustration, by Maxfield Parrish)

You’re poverty of emotions,

you’re hopeless to understand

I pick up the brush.
First since my apocalypse.
Previous layers,
Long dried, await more paint.
Do I even remember how?

Child sits
in the circle
of his father’s curled arm
two faces
watching everything
from high up above
smiles
beaming boisterously
back and forth and far beyond
like those candid shots
and photographs
that hold more truth
than preformed thought
young and aging
mirrored want
colliding spans of space and time
third child
hanging
tightly on
to a moment
that almost never was.

my heart is a bird

beak sharp, snapping on the bars

my head is a cage

A toy firetruck that makes noise
More legos than are ever used
The simplest of crafts
and friends to play with

It really doesn’t take much to make a child
happy and the delight of a child’s heart
can touch the adults they interact with
in a way that refreshes the thirstiest soul

My friends think they’ll read my poems
one day and I think that’s as likely as
a bear eating Boy Scout Troop 8-0-8,
they think my mental pursuits are like
having someone else move the furniture
from floor to floor., who can blame them?
They think I don’t know how to screw
a screw into a pine board or an adjective
into a noun and give me attributes
I’d rather not have. They think I’m listening 
to birds when I’m listening to poems
and when I write about making love,
to them it’s just another blue etcetera.

My friends think I’m a line short of a sonnet

Minimalism

less is more they say
striped bare, boiled to the bone
essence left alone

Surrealism

umbrellas raining
crawling ants and melting clocks
wearing jello socks

Impressionism

mingling colors fuse
matter turns to fluid light
dashes shimmer bright

Let me see:
you are prodigiously articulate,
erudite, sagacious,  
and astutely discerning.   

You are the perfect mix of
jocularity and sympathy,
sensitivity and wit,
the paragon of verbose perspicacity.  

And how very, very
serendipitous it is
that you are mine.