some of my words gathered

Escape

She liked to wander through the town,
down this alley and that lane, always
bearing towards the sea — whose beating
roar overlay everything — until she came
to the town’s edge where the water stretched
before her, pewter under the clouds, greener
in the shallows; until she stood where the water
ran up the beach, uninterrupted. She liked
to follow the sandpipers along the shoreline,
with their skittering steps, watch the mewling
gulls as they balanced their wings
to accommodate the wind currents. She
sat for hours on the sand, watching
and listening, content to squander time.

published in Waterways, September, 2014

Hospital Room

She waits for them to wheel him away;
a saline drip, pulse and blood pressure,
tubes sprout: a routine surgery,

they all say. She wears his wedding ring
on her right hand. Her thumb keeps
touching it as she watches the monitor,

the rise and fall of the heartbeat. She
wonders why it changes when it does,
wonders if his heart beats like that

when she can’t see the monitor, tries not
to be appalled that he can be reduced
to a small black screen full of numbers

and the heartbeats’ peaks and valleys
that are not consistent — they come for him
and the monitor no longer has a heartbeat.

She waits.

published in Waterways, October 2014

A Thousand and One Nights

Among the flowers of my Persian carpet
vines sprout curl twine me into fields of silk
and wool. Sliding through warp and weft,
I hear the rustle of thread grasses, and
my nostrils fill with the pungency of feral cats,
I taste the dryness of dust, and the dampness
of a blue silk river runs through my ears.
A blend and blur of color mark the horizon
spots of russet and black resolving into a hunt
undisturbed by my addition to the scene.
Arabian steeds damp dark with silken sweat,
silent as Attic shapes, prance and wheel
through date palms and trees of fiery-fruited
pomegranate. Turbaned caliphs, bows slung
across their backs, chase a leopard forever
peering over his shoulder. An arrow loosed never
hits its mark eternally suspended by woven
threads. Trees stand in an expectancy of silence
as I move within zig-zags of light and shadow.
My arms slide round the leopard’s golden
ruff and I am bound by threads of color
to be hunted forever through fields of silk and
wool, chased by frozen horses, another
player in the weaving fields of Bokkhara.

published in Lunarosity, 2004

 

 

By Design

From girlhood they learn
the intricate patterns of life
and they sit the daughters and wives
they sit through the long winter afternoons
with needles and yarn and they learn
the intricate patterns of death.

And they learn these daughters and wives
of fishermen each family’s pattern
worked in criss-crossed cable
intricate patterns passed from generation
to generation knitting a history.

And when the fishermen
struggling for survival sail out
on the harsh and inhospitable seas
they wear their thick seaworthy sweaters
each interlocking serpentine design
lovingly knitted by daughters and wives
who when the storms blow
sit and wait and watch for
their fathers their lovers their husbands
and when the boat does not return
they still wait for the sea to return
the fishermen home and when the bodies
erased by the waves tumble on shore
the girls and the women come down to the sand
to search amongst the sweaters until each
finds their one intricate pattern
lovingly knitted and knows the design
of their lives has unraveled
in the intricate pattern of Aran.

published in WORM, 2004

Blood Tree

The aborigines call it
the mari, or blood tree,
for the gaping wounds
that bleed a scarlet resin
which with age

(like blood crusting on a cut)

blackens.

published in Ink & Ashes, 2005

Mindgames

threads of sanity cascade
through empty spaces
where thoughts no longer hear
my words not spoken

through empty spaces
where shattered dreams contain
my words not spoken
shouting through my hollow body

where shattered dreams contain
syllables of silence
shouting through my hollow body
through blue river veins

syllables of silence
reaching out for empty spaces
through blue river veins
where thoughts no longer breathe

reaching out for empty spaces
touching faraway mountain tips
where thoughts no longer breathe
black across the midday

touching faraway mountain tips
threads of sanity cascade
black across the midday
where thoughts no longer hear

published by Prism Quarterly, 2005

 

Remnants of a Tsunami

    Japanese, from tsu harbor + nami wave
    a great sea wave produced  by 
    submarine earth movement 
    or volcanic eruption

A town 
reduced to
rubble
mud
bricks
kindling
shattered stone,
trees uprooted
a leg sheared at the knee
bloated bodies stacked
the top of a baby grand 
a mattress floating

and in the town square
like some bizarre sculpture
a motorcycle leans drunkenly 
on the roof of a boat resting
on the collapsed walls of a house.

The only sounds
the wind, the waves,
the gulls, a dog barking,
and a man chanting the Koran
at the grave of his sister.


published by the Platte Valley Review, 2010

 

Desert Jousters

Their shells, breathing skeletal shields, shine like mottled amber,
as two tortoises stare each other down;
reptilian heads bob and weave at the ends of long necks, beak-mouths open
hissing, popping and grunting.
Males, they attempt to flip each other onto rounded,
rocking backs, while perching on pin points, claws scrabbling;
high-domed armoured battle-boxes, they face off,
move towards each other, slow blood, slow heartbeats,
stumpy columned legs lifting and setting, like sumo wrestlers in the ring.

Published in Waterways, 2012