Ghosts of Christmas Past

We stood at the edge of midnight

all standstill and not quite caress,

steepled in truncated desire

in that winter resonance

      of Austrian hush

just before the church bells rang.

Nineteen and twenty-one -- 

children, really,

though we imagined ourselves

agelessly mature

in our conversations of 
Neitzsche's Will to Power

and the archetypes of Carl Jung.

Now you still drink too much,

I still sing lonely love songs

into a different pitch-dark night.

Do you remember, too,

that long-ago, snow-covered escapade?

The way our breath billowed before us?

My heart-stopping dance,

sliding backward

into black-ice streets?

Ghosts before us revisited

Ghosts before us

   With thanks to Joseph Massey

        And Lorine Niedecker

We dance as through a fog,

see only clearly

the fine lines of our hands

held before us

to keep the totality of our being

from falling into

misted loves,

to halt the dizzy immersion

into the felt but not yet seen.

Though our hearts call to them,

and our steps

         long for the pathway

                     to their souls,

we make out only

the shadowy after-birth

of those we wish to fully love,

with each blind step

   we lean toward

        that which lies beyond

only to find our hopeful embrace

empties into mist,

leaves us fingering

the wispy residue of our longing.

Anticipation

It's this grey sky
and the ocean,
churning beneath
the northwest wind
that put me in this mood:
waiting for a phone-call
or the sound of your van
crunching onto our gravel drive.

I have to remind myself
it is neither a lack in me
that makes you silent, unavailable,
nor my inner beauty that brings you here
after such long absence;
but merely your own wishes.

Our connection once ran deep
as the currents beneath
this roiling sea  --
unfathomable, chilling.

Though you will say it's nothing more
than sex we're missing,
I know better.

NICU

Do not let them die

those fragile dream babies.

Feed them on your hospiced hopes,
swaddle their broken hearts
with your blankets
of patient practice;
persistent attention.
Let them breathe
of your hopeful hungers

also your sacred skeptics,

as they suckle on memories 
of cratered connections,

forge new and vital bonds

mirror the rhythmic beating --

the open, 
close, 
open --
of your hallowed heart.

a little anti-antipathy

People say,
"What can
we do
ourselves?"
I say
put
your feet
in the
shoes
of
someone else.

One thing
I know
we
cannot do
Is pretend
it's happenin'
to them
And not
to you
Is pretend it's happenin' to them
and not
to you

The Other Side

I used to think I was alone
the only one who couldn't find "home":
that place the Masters say will be
the  inner sanctum where we're free.

Turns out there's millions of us here
who turn within to get more clear
and yet to know ourselves is not
the end and point of this life's plot

If we but keep our gaze within
we lose the chance to see our sin
the way our blindness like a sea
covers truths in them, not me.

The ship of fools is built within
when we refuse to listen in
to foreign lives, those not like ours
the gift is in our imaginitive powers

The times we quiet cacophony
to hear "the other", not just "we",
to stretch beyond experience
of our own lives, and jump the fence

To get that while we'll never know
exactly what has helped them grow
or made them closed or scared or tight
what gives them closed and fisted fights

Presuming "we" are "it" -- enough
is like a man upon a bluff
who sees the ocean far below
believes it's he who makes it flow

Civil disobedience

Fear fuels
Anger over-drive
Darkened Yule
bodies in streets lie
A thin veil
Silence won't abide
Following the grail
Communities will rise

Winter Chalice

buried hearts unearthed

broken open by grief's fire

love's serrated witness

Corinthian's Contusions

Blind frightened power
Pursuing imagined threats
dim-lit mirrors fail

We Have Met The Enemy

The closing heart

bereft at injustice

demanding witness

requires continued 

compassionate connections

or it so easily forgets

how to open, 

can't release constricted valves

painfully staunches the flow 

of our own life-blood 

strangles 

us

until

we

can't breathe