simple stories honored
or lost in the retelling.
i am too tired to move forth
in defense. so they are hurt.
i cannot heal them.
history so far from truth,
it's history, no longer.

there are hinges that open
to swing both ways,
letting in what is leaving
at the same time.

my memory opens in the wind,
dances silent as a ribbon
within its own colorstream.
it folds, to keep itself
in place and safe,
end to end.

a map, i can bend
to place your distance
in a curve so our
geographies touch.

neither sky nor road's fully
emptied. ever. a long expanse
of absence still, dense
with thought and ancient
questions no one's asked yet.
pulled into place by
a headlights warped light.
i have lost you.

absence shared.
unlikely intimacy.
sometimes it's my needs,
what i lack,
hunger, that
holds me
together.

shadow in exile

the darkest hours aren't fixed
between dawn and dusk.
a bleak light grafted to unclaimed,
late noon. flat
and thin edged.
sharp. don't touch.
subtly sour. it bleaches
my texture flat. a complete and quiet
annihilation despite

a backdrop of birdsong.

i strain to hear the
things with wings that sing.
it's everywhere lost to simple listening.
how do we become so used to beauty?
irreverent.

writing is a place
of emergency. writing like
a fugitive hidden
behind sanctified walls.
a poorly made roost - oddly sized nails,
splintered boards -- unstable, yet crafted
with care - full intent.
a center erected.
homed birds return with a message
or not.

if there's a barrier, it's a wall
of invitation. the stones fit loose,
carefully chosen for
their imperfection. room to breathe,
each to each and each between.
the wind given voice, so it comes
to sing - nature's force diffused
through its unearthly whistle,
channeling ghosts or perhaps
the rocks themselves.

and when the mooded earth
move-fidgets, the stone's resettle with it.
inverted time lapse dances of mountain ridges,
sleek as snakes.

urgency can be incredibly slow - thoughts so
deliberate, they stall
- somewhere
- impossibly vague
- safe from written language.
startled and kept at bay by
light's sharp edges. taken
for granted. so, guarded from me
by my own internal silence.
a boundary erected
with reverence's final vestige.