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Clear cold nights remind me
of the Ozarks, of looking
through the leafless trees
standing like skeletons
who shield the silent stars.
Tonight the branches cradle
the moon in a ribcage,
and I wonder how this light
shines after so many years.
Under the winter sky I stand,
my lungs burn from the frigid air.
Silence is welcome since words fade
quicker than the puffs of breath
measuring my mounting loss.
This ramshackle soul may be built
for eternity, but the finite still
crushes these bones to dust,
freeing the soul to finally fly.
Some days the words are slow to form,
and my mind is as empty as the lines
on the waiting pages. Hours pass
before I notice the soft tapping of sleet
against the window, reminding me
of the time I ran across the sidewalk
at grandma’s house, and my foot slipped
on the ice. I hovered parallel to the ground
before crashing hard upon my back.
For a moment I could not catch my breath,
and I blinked in wonder when the stars
watched me gasp for the freezing air.
we fill our days
wrestling with words
since we do not agree
on the meaning
of love. so how
can we love each other?
do we continue
sharing sacred
space where all
may stand in silence?
how can we pray,
side by side, and peek
from almost closed eyes
to keep watch
over our neighbor?
The trail’s end winds tightly
down a ledge that opens
to a fading western sky.
Light becomes as colored
here as the early dawn
when small birds begin to call.
But now hushed cool air clips
at my skin. Wild flowers
flicker and watch the trees
write their stories in the wind.
sometimes i see him
even though they say
he is invisible i see
him in the waiting
in the long desperate times
of darkness when things
unseen are so close
that i cannot touch them
unless i step away
I began my morning walk
not knowing when I’d return.
I had time, or rather,
time had me by the hand
and led me somewhere
I had not been. A field
with wild grass stretched
to every horizon except
for one tree whose leaves
were the colors of dusk.
I stayed a while past lunch,
my pockets full of things
I thought I had lost.
My burdens are invisible,
internal struggles, depression
whose weight grows each year.
It hasn’t always been this way.
Not like this fading tide recedes
into the deep with wreckage spinning
underneath the constant waves.
* * *
I’m doing better now than I was when I wrote this poem. If you are dealing (or have dealt) with depression, there can come a day when the waves are calmer and the storm subsides.
I return more for the place
than the lessons spoken there.
The silence after the words,
the breath taken and released.
The reminder of beginnings
and ends, the spaces we take,
the lives we shape. The words
are pointers, signposts, maps.
The living is in between.
i remember the scent of honeysuckle
as you drove us through the countryside,
our bloodshot eyes still stinging
from our all-night charade in the city.
you said – I don’t want to do that again.
Ever. – and then you said nothing more.
i don’t remember when you fell asleep,
only the car lights blinding my eyes,
the grass wet with mist and blood,
and the smell of smoke. i couldn’t see
you pinned beneath the car, glass
scattered on the ground like shattered
bits of loss, irreparable, irreplaceable.
* “you” first appeared in Panoply, Issue 7, Summer 2017.
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