You all are perfect
captured here today
for every tomorrow
The slant of light
across our eyes
casts lash shadows
I kiss each cheek
embrace you deeply
and never release
The young, fairest here
run about the rest
embroidering paths through time
The old are queued
first in, first out
will miss us each
So today raise a glass
let’s revel in light
There’s so much still remaining
© Chagall 2014
I’m yawed just a tilt from norm, thus this vantage
The sun fans beams in broad sweeps so far as breezes will bear
I thought that rather we’d touch down in dazzling canopy
To have trusted the odd turn along the shoreline
Where would we be then, I wonder but haven’t a clue
We are blessed to have known each other since morning though
Now shadows draw long across the royal emerald of gated lawns
Beyond the open pastures where we’d come to know the keepers
The planet’s star poking through bashful branches in winter
A fire where we wept for reason rather than comfort
How elusive the eye drawn to windswept curtains in afterglow
Slid palms over smoothed skin caught muscle deep in nurtured rub
Released in lips onto lips, blow to blow, then to now till then again
In lovely refrain of approaching night, a lullaby sung in oval tones
Windows open, no one awake, clearly still light though waning
People scurry home to savor the last day
I will die in your presence if my life is to spiral
And live in your absence despite lying here broken on hard crag
Rag doll from above, crippled hieroglyphic on splintered rock
Arms and legs
akimbo
© Chagall 2014
The intent of auburn she always wears turquoise
simply and nothing else rarely
I love her best in astringent ether on tight lean lines
we extend a single pivot deep and low
more adrift than punctuate, solitude for two
Our clouds come in many colors
but still go, who knew the storm before that stayed
surely it rained a little sometime now and maybe less than later
I’d seen her on rooftops and feared she’d fall
she dropped once and I dreamed of bridges afar
where I’d fly though I had no cause to crash
on any but my own terms
How easy to have stayed aloft
to find her updraft if I dared
to release, let the guide wires catch
in graceful vines overhead
instead I fell bowed low in salted air
awash in radiation
The day
bakes me
I lose awareness in descent
over the surface tension of roiling water
instantaneous dreams of fall mix with actual falling
a swirl in the darkness between images is neither sight nor thought then
but something else awash in the eddies
Insight rather
into the nature of falling
and who we’ve come to be
And we’re not
till we’re here
then we’re not
© Chagall 2014
I so do love
tightening off
a little
afternoon
pinch
© Chagall 2014
She yelled for brighter angels
new-found graces where ice breaks down
in floes of genius apparently this happens
often in parts outside the comfort zone
I establish a point of view in flight where
the black of the tree line is wholly consumed
in the darkest of lilacs which is the sky
I crane magnificently arced till I bow
can break but ply instead into supple
curves and apogees without crescendo
calliopes play children’s refrains
I stretch for ever brass rings
asleep in our meadow this slow rainy night
nestled under straw atop coarse blankets
slender lavender crowns in lieu of white pillows
of linen delicately tatted lace pressed deliciously
against my cold cheek I release in waves
while I lengthen myself along the tufted frame of the universe
my feet touched by long grass
© Chagall 2014
Sweetheart, I was making welfare grilled cheese
long before microwaves
© Chagall 2014
His mom made such tender corn cakes
a woman of Mayan background
whose grandmother grew
maize on a steppe
masterful salt
caramel
© Chagall 2014
They will inevitably ask me who I think won
the battle of Shiloh and I reply shall I
include the twenty-four thousand who died there?
© Chagall 2014
Nothing here
now everywhere
while nowhere is
quite center
© Chagall 2014
And then it dawned on me
that it’s so important to know
when you are not doing something
and why
© Chagall 2014
Alphabet City 