Right now it’s dry, a bed of stones, but when it storms, this tiny creek roars and rumbles, rushing like a river, twisting and swirling as it comes to life again, awakened by the weather to be what it’s meant to be, its brown green water overflowing its shallow banks, not deep enough to have a name, not known on any map but swift as any creek in any land before it disappears, its source unknown, and yet it comes back ti...

Looking at the morning moon,pale now in the southern sky,moving slowly like me,while the sun is rising in the east,bringing dawn and another day,and even though the trees are stilland it’s quiet here,no birds at the feeder,the squirrels have not begun their chatter,my dog is still asleep,yet everything is moving, spinning, ticking, breathingand somewhere far awaytears are in the corner of sad eyes,or a smile has come to s...

They say that wine is best when it has aged, but who are they to say that? What do they know, these experts, about age? What about the grapes, the vines, the sun, the soil, the misty mornings, the eyes that watched the ripening, the fingers that plucked and with their art created what they poured into each bottle as if it were a poem? Perhaps it was the age of the wine maker, who after many years could close his eyes and...

Glancing in the rearview mirror at the years behind me, looking at what disappears when I go around a bend or up a hill then down and the past is gone until I stop to look back at the choices that I’ve made and listen to the voices rising in me when I sit still in the dark, my headlights off, the gearshift in park, and I remember wondering which way to go when I didn’t have a map or know where I was or where to turn and n...

 Many great ideas are accidents--so are melodies and first lines of poemsand how about the dreamsyou bump into in the middle of the nightthat wake you with what you need to know.Sometimes, heading west, blinded by the glaring sun,you barely miss a head-on crash and stop,hands on the steering wheel, learning what a gift your breath is.And some mornings sitting here,the movie of my life plays backwardsand looking at the scr...

 Good morning stars--again our orbits crossand I see your worldshigh above my life, my eyes touching youmillions of miles awaywhere we meet each dawn, your burning worlds swirling,though some are embers nowburnt out light years ago,a state I cannot knowsince news travels slowly across the universe,and yet, your fire in my eyes pulls me towards your glow,and makes mewonder am I with youhigh above my life?Are you burning in...

In dawn’s stillness,listening to the quiethover like fog,I disappearand nothing exists.No sound, no light,no breath,no motion,not even my heartbeat can be heard,just silence until the crackle of the firelike a hand clapsnaps me from myabsence.And I see a blue jayat the feeder in the dim lightof another daywhere silence disappears and goes where I long to go.   

Yesterday, planting daffodils and tulips in the new bed I made, lining tree trunks from the pine and spruce that once grew taller than my house, old warriors, now fallen so that I could have more sunlight in my life, more color all around me, taking what I need, to create the world I want to live and die in. And kneeling there-- dirt beneath my nails from giving each bulb the earth and space it needs to blossom in the spr...

Sitting at my table, looking at the clock, its long finger pointing at the minutes, while the shorter finger holds the hours down like a thumb pushing in a tack to hold time still, but nothing stops the orbit of those fingers. Outside the wind is blowing and the trees bend and sway in the wildness of this cold, grey day, while I look at the clock, its fingers ignorant of the wind and the beating of my heart, or what is ha...

Sometimes you light my way with your bright face, your lovely face, so round, so luminous floating through the darkness at a pace so slow it’s almost still and devious, pulling tides higher on the shore, blinding me from stars with your strange, indifferent glow. Sometimes, you hide in shadows finding ways to give so little light as you grow darker with each passing night, a sliver, a slight smile on you lips, a teasing g...

Even in escape, there’s no escape, no opening of waters, no Promised Land,no paradise, no freedom if the Sinai that was crossedso long ago is littered now with bonescrumbling in that sandand broken hearts are screaming anguished criesand tears from longing eyes roll down cheekslooking at the land no longer theirs.Now, there is no grassy hill to sit on in the setting sunfeeling chosen while the "un-chosen" run through burn...

I sit here every dawn because I do, and I keep the fire going because I want the warmth. I eat a piece of toast because I’m hungry and look up at the morning star because it’s there.I listen to my heart because it’s beating and it’s quiet in the stillness of this room. I take a breath because I want the air and cannot stop what enters me with every breath-- these thoughts, these memories, these longings that swirl in me b...

Note: Simon was an unknown philosopher and friend of Socrates. In this poem I am trying to bring him from obscurity and to show what it must have been like to be at one of the symposiums held in his sandal shop. “So here we are again, dear friend,” he’d say, greeting Socrates, kissing cheeks the way they had for years, opening his sandal shop for these gatherings, where we could stop for conversations, forgetting time, le...

  If we weren’t here everything would flourish. The blazing sun would rise each day like now. The moon would do its rounds and what would perish would not know its name. New seeds somehow would grow and from decay bloom new flowers, new colors, new aromas and the new seeds would plant themselves with no one on their knees. The forests would take back the land, grow thick where cities were, the vines embracing towers, ivy...

Being older doesn’t make me any less a kid still holding what was precious then, though now they’re tarnished and I must confess dulled by these aging hands and yet, again and again I hold those ideals to the light— sometimes the sun, sometimes the turning moon-- looking for that sparkle, that radiant sight, and again I want the warmth of noon, the sweetness of the air, the tender breeze of dreaming what could be, so full...