Fiction, music, poetry, and the occasional drawing…
I hope, for you,
the singing of the insects is
a shimmery, summery sound
I hope the water that trickles
across the slippery rocks
brings you something that can pass for peace
I hope the light
that filters through
the endless rows of branches,
casts its longest shadows
on the grass that almost tickles
your bare toes and heels and arches
in a way that makes you
smile
When I say I never knew your name, I am not talking about the one your parents gave you. I am talking about the one you gave yourself. You know the one I mean, the one that bubbled to the surface of your life on a hot summer night, like this one, when you were all alone in your room, feeling inexplicably sad but hopeful.
This name was not one that you had heard before, yet you instantly recognized it as yours.
Although at that time I was hundreds of miles away from you, and had not met you, and could not hear the name you gave yourself, I felt the reverberations of its echo.
When I am calm enough, I still can.
The thing in me that
your long look kindled,
that grew and blossomed
under the soft light
of an all-forgiving sun
will not wither
will not die
but also will not grow again
The thing in me that
made me feel like something new
has turned around to look at me from the other side
and makes me feel like something old
The thing in me that
keeps me warm when the sun goes down and
keeps me cool when everything boils,
that keeps me calm when the bullets fly and
alerts me when the whole world sleeps
has reached the end of the circle and
like a song at the end of a verse it
has come to a chorus that will repeat
until the fade
Beauty is hard to quantify
I wouldn’t want to if I could
It would take away all the joy
and mystery
and grace
and other things not found in words or numbers
Across the drops of streetlights
faces shine and fade with time and other
forces of destruction and deterioration
Blankets that we pull across our
sore and frozen memories that
cry out so pathetically
for comfort and for warmth
The hour has already passed
for final judgments falling down
for making up excuses that
not even we believed
Centuries, like dominoes,
teeter, waver, slip and fall
until none are left who can remember
any other life at all
Millennia of mystery
centuries of confusion
decades of disaster
become years of empty long and
those days we lost to dreams
Vagabonds in stolen clothes
will try to rewrite history
because the lessons that we learned
are not the ones they taught
Birds and flowers try to tell us
stories buried in the earth with
bones and swords and walls that fell,
and rose, and fell again
We are crushed beneath the heels
of soldiers left on battlefields
to cry, and die, and rot and mark
our histories with their curse
On summer evenings, after rain
when clouds hold back but can’t stop light
we will sit and read our books
and listen to the aching trees
telling us the only stories that we need to hear
Every leaf on every branch of every tree in the forest
dances to a different tune
Every star that twinkles with a million-year-old light
looks all the way into you
Every bit of foam on every wave in every sea
likes to know that you are here
And every moment of a lifetime in eternity
offers up its own opportunity
Every brick in every wall we build to keep us apart
cries to be taken down
every lie we ever told and all that we believed
hide from us now
we’re stalking something wild and empty
without a penny, or a gun
we’re following the trail of something free, and
we never will be done
we never will be done
The time for us was never right
but even right goes dark at night
Even right goes wrong sometimes
and desperation blurs the lines
The time for us is always now
When it ends, we won’t know how
all the pieces fit in place
that scattered into empty space
The place for us is on a hill
that balances the wild and still,
that overflows its narrow banks,
and walks on weatherbeaten planks
The time for us will never end
The road is long and does not bend
With love, you cannot lose the fight
The time for us is always right
