Daily Sauntering

Crimson spreads across the west. The eastern edge bleeds softly, pale stars on blue, stripes of red and tender white, a flag the sky hangs out by itself.

Flower scent, caught in the teeth of the dark, drifts sideways on the wind.

*

One rises, one falls. Your loss, my betrayal, hanging over the trembling land like smoke from a single lamp.

*

With the sound of bones licked clean, the counting goes down into me, takes root in the hollow of my soul, and splits what had been whole.

*

Neighbor and neighbor, eyes meeting across the void. No word is spoken, yet the silence is a battlefield.

*

I had fallen like a beast at the trough, gasping in the mire of the news.

Then one flowering tree, and my body was already rising before I knew it.

The blossoming tree, death itself standing before me in a bridal veil, reminding me that every throne is only for a season.

*

I no longer want to win. If I could ask for anything, I would ask only to see a human face again across the aisle, and in it, the Friend.

*

Past midnight a thin old moon rises in silence. Whoever wins tonight, perhaps it is her turn to grieve for all of us.

Seeing the bones of feelings,
tasting the heights and depths,
the nearness and the distance,
the far and the near.

For a while,
wandering through the forest,
lost within its silence,
singing with the trees
and letting tears flow
into the streams.

Let the words from these bones
grow wings
and fly to the highest sky.

For a while, wondering through skyscrapers, lost within its streets of gold, singing with the signs, and letting winds flow into the music.

Seeing the bones of souls, tasting the quality and degree of interval in scale, and rhythm flow into hearts.

Let this communion
flutter softly upon our tears
and find its way
into the waiting hearts
of other poets.

Ah, seeing the music on your eyes.

– The Ever-Now

Ring the bell,
once for each name
that walked ahead of us.

Light the candle,
not for absence,
but because love
still knows how to shine.

*

Last night the streets wore masks.
Laughter wandered under the moon.

Now morning lifts the veil.

*

Look to the mountains.
From the high ridge
color pours downhill,
green, then rust,
then red, then gold,
gold fading into violet,
until heaven lies scattered
in the neighbor’s backyard.

*

Listen.
Cicada gives way to cricket,
cricket to the mockingbird
on the high wire.

One reed falls silent.
The same breath
moves to the next.

*

Where are the saints?

Here.
Behind us, beside us,
within us,
whirling through the stars,
singing in the Ever-Now.

They live in every gift,
every shared loaf,
every heart left open,
the remembered and the remembering
drinking from one cup.

*

So I ask:
Are you dead?
Am I alive?

Or have we always lived
in the same house of Love,
where death
is only a curtain
between two rooms?

*

The leaves change color
because they are alive.

And you, beloved saints,
are changing in me too,
into memory,
into gratitude,
into joy,
into praise.