then there are the dreams
you do remember
not just wisps
which vanish forgotten
at fingertips’ ends
but the ones that cling
their razor tipped claws
toying with your heart
late into the afternoon
at the end of winter
(December 6, 2025)
Category: eros
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Either/Or
by
“I have committed adultery in my heart..”
—- Jimmy Carter
the moments went unnoticed
until days sometimes years later
when the obvious slid past
like shadows tossed through a window
by a passing car late at night
and he realized what had been offered
when the difference in time between what
almost occurred and what he desired
vanished so regret could have grown
from a surreptitious kiss bestowed
instead of the one that was not
(April 26, 2025)
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After wandering lost,
circling familiar trails,
I brought us here again:
a reflection in a mirror
of a mirror’s reflection.
If I turned to you now,
my face in your eyes,
your face in my eyes,
and supposed
a vision of love,
would much change
from what it was,
or what we have become?
(September 26, 2024)
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Dew upon the grass,
the moon open to the sky,
for years we sing our song together.
Rain and tears flow through my heart
only to vanish in the river’s flow.
Outside the tree’s branches
reach into the dark night.
(August 23, 2022)
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Summoned from Shaman Mountain
as his lover for the night, she steps
lightly from dream rising on waves
surging from a storm. The flowers
give way beneath the plum tree’s
branches; and, the scent of narcissus
lingers like the moon before the dawn,
as she wraps her thighs around his hips.
(July 7, 2022)
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Ikkyu Reiterations: The Interpreted World
by
aging, chance, change, eros, ikkyu, loss, meditation, middle-age, poetry, transition, ways of knowing, zen
For decades he shambles
along the same path,
oblivious, naive —
then there it is— blossoms
arrayed along a branch.
She offers a tasteof a dewy-ripe peach;
he cannot bear
such divinity, and falls
away into profane sorrow.
(May 5, 2022)
-
this letter will be ignored
as so many others
or perhaps worse
misread
as if
some other
were the subject
instead of you
(February 9, 2021)
-
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (80)
so he thought if
as if she said
what he heard
he thought she
said more
he wanted her
to say more
yet her metaphor
slanted in then
out like a kite
testing the wind
with her string
(July 22, 2020)
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Why shouldn’t I?
A wren perched next to a cardinal
like a drunkard on a stool
looking for a bit of trouble:
Am I such an easy fool
to think this wind is for me?
A yes, and a yes, waited unsaid.
(July 21, 2020)
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As they walked, she spoke and collected items she saw along the trail. A kind of reverse Hansel and Gretel: instead of finding her way back by dropping bread crumbs, she wanted to become lost, and collected markers which would have shown their way home. Finally, she asked if he would read a draft of something she wrote. He disliked reading friend’s work (it was all too intimate: entering another’s mind), but he said for her he would. He lay down on the soft grass, entranced by her voice. She told a story as she placed the objects she had found (an acorn, a feather, a stone, a dead butterfly, a ribbon) in a shallow hole next to where he lay. After a while, he sat up and glanced at the objects in the hole. He said, it’s like a witch’s ingle. She laughed gently, and began to loosely tie his hands with the ribbon as she finished her story. He watched her dark eyes focus on the task, becoming lost in their intensity. When she was done, she said to him, now you’re supposed to untie yourself, and become free. He said, one would first have to want to be free. With nothing more to say, she walked away leaving him in the woods.
(April 1, 2020)
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