WEAVE YOUR SORROW

It’s simple
Change your sorrow
Into love.
Begin by taking each strand
Of sad
And looping it around
Something in this world.
Circle around a butterfly’s wing
Around the rain in the mountains
Through the river that flows towards you
The pebble on the sand
That is too small.
The list goes on and on.
Keep beginning
Again and again.

ANGELS AND SEAGULLS

Have you seen the light
Shining through the gull’s wing
So bright
You see through?
This must be an angel.
It pelts through the sky
Zig zagging its wings
Catching the wind in
An up draft,
A down
And the cry
Is a high pitched screek:
It hurts your ears
Haunts you
Calls you.

What do they do
Out in the blue
For so long
Not to come down
“Cept to fight and to fish:
Rob food
Right from a beak.
Such a fuss.
I guess they’re
No angels
With their beauty, their troubles.
Hey, they’re like
us!

(from a children's book I am working on.  dedicated to my grandchildren: Huck and Bronte)

ANGELS AND SEAGULLS

OUTCOME

I breathe with the wind on the bay
Dragging in a great dragon
Of fog from under the bridge.
It’s tail disappears around Alcatraz.
Horns herald its coming
In stereo
Hi — Low.
There is an inevitability of
Seeking solid land.

It moves with a constancy
Little known in this world
Steady, onward
Hour after hour.
I expect it to blanket
Everything I know.

But it does not happen.
It does not build upon itself.
It does not gather a force
And spill over
To new territory.
We do not always know
The outcome of these things.

ON RECEIVING PLUMS

 for Nanette

There is something
So relaxing about a plum
The pitty flesh on top of my tongue
Flavors explode
But they're not exotic
They're not intriguing
Just ordinary plum
Sitting there
Releasing
The sun.

WHEN

When your tears flow with the river
You are not alone.

When water is held in water
There is no separation.

When water matches thirst
Unexpected
Exaltation.

Let the rains fall
We are the chorus.