The Fisher Woman

The words swirl all around me like
....Schools of flashing silver fish,
Elusive, free, to grasp at them
....To place them side by side,
These underwater syllables still
....Flee an eager pen and cannot,
Will not settle on a page.

How cold this water, full of words
....These flightful phrases made of
Myriad schools, pervasive souls.
....They slip past this fisher woman’s
Persistent trolling search for all
....Those flashes that when caught
Will brace tomorrow’s poems.

Porch

Sitting on the porch tonight, tired, escaping day heat
....In the dusk before the dark, there are no long shadows
To prop up barns and trees and fences. It is quiet
....And the lastlight of an arrogant relentless sun has
Had the decency to blush before shutting down the day.

Then night’s hidden tree frogs begin noisily demanding
....That I listen to them sing their extended version
Of the history of the world, in four thousand fourteen
....Chapters, tonight, in unison, before the farmyard
Explodes again in one more fevered dawn.

And I do, until the middle of Chapter three thousand one,
....When I realize it’s true that in these magic moments
In the defeated quiet of a starful country evening
....(And in spite of an unfamiliarity with Froglish) I, in fact,
Do understand their hallelujah history of the world.

Rain

Rain
shuttered eyes see drops which hesitate,
rivulets that stream the windows of
a glazed heart slipped with
Rain
that pounds the silence, music fading,
hue-less, an empty, hissing,
sound of want, sound of
Rain
cold, comes to fill this hollow shell
of ribs, of spine, abandoned, blind
and drowning in the
Rain
licks the face stretched upward, taut with
howls of loss, echos, drinking in
an unripe night of
Rain
rinses unsewn colors from the tapestry,
thread-etched, with future days
unraveling, barren in the
Rain
slick, reflected, sieved through empty
hands, bruised with memories losing
color, losing heat in
Rain
.........try to hold the rain,

..................try
......................to
..........................hold
..............................the
.............................................Rain.

Tin Mirror

He leaves her nothing, choosing his blind need.
....Ecstacy, the kind she does not wish to share.
A trip, he offers, with its cocaine tarnished
....Silver pleasures … no? He still inhales it by
Lifting the tin mirror, and he all but disappears.
....The abandoned coffee in his cup grows cold,
Silence dulls the table surface and she’s alone
....Holding shards of what once was theirs.

He, in deserted dank hotel rooms, takes
....That hidden thing and practices his lies.
Brass numbers cockeyed, gaping doors
....With dusty cobwebs waiting. Smiling,
He enters in, with dark thick trembling,
....And in lonely adverse expectation,
Throws away his life each time he breathes
....Fire in his soul. But it is she who burns.

Now the mirrors show thinned fragile shadows
....Inside those blackened tenements of grief,
Those corrupt rooms with unsure daytimes,
....Offramp houses and blinks of night opening to
Hungry streets, unwashed with howls of want.
....Seductive shining opaque ghettos,
That seal off the pastplace of their life.
....She, eyes skinned, runs naked from the ash.