Elusive like the memory of a dream,
Like invisible currents hiding in plain sight,
Or autumn leaves under white frost,
Is life.
And its inscrutability makes the nearness of you
Feel like a solid wing refusing to ascend
With the onset of Fall’s migratory cries.
My longing is of a soft dawn
Rubbing its possibilities in my face
And brightening my countenance
With pale yellow light,
Until I reach that place where thoughts
Become trees reaching
For their potential.
My eyes are open to the songs of wind.
My thoughts echoing the migratory cries of summer
Winding its way home.
The soft chiffon of sky is swaddling the bare black world
As my ears capture the rain of star dust
Nourishing another year’s end
With ancestral prayers.
Have you ever looked at your own reflection
In the surface of the sea?
Then you will know the secret of life:
Your face a part of the sea,
Solid only in the shallow, close to land.
But then, as the sea deepens, it loses its shape
And expands, becoming the sea itself,
As it laughingly color the ripples
With its everlasting jigsaw presence.
Autumn is the softness in you,
The mellowness as life deepens,
The baritone of your voice
As you transform from the listener
To the singer.
If you break, break deeply,
Like tide all the way into the shallow coves,
So that even the sharpest rocks must give into you
And loose their pointy edges.
Your soul is like that tide,
If you allow it it will wash over you with its full force,
And slowly and persistently blunt your own
Sharp edges.
