Alphabet City

The other side breathes
Eulogy in haiku verse
Exhale into God

Chagall 2018

Sometimes I sit at the piano and shape chord forms freely in space,
handsome constructions of arched fingers in opposing motions,
in search of dissonance over harmony

While she randomly intones beautiful sonority, sounds like words
aimed at the more resonant chambers of the room, her voice round
with a touch of rasp to engage the world-weary

Her melody shifts at odd intervals, the tempo-free meter floats
in time and heart, in perfect poise aligned without tonic,
we resolve at will, or not at all, the upper partials of our tensions

We modulate to a better point of view on life, its victories
and more often of late, its sweet despairs, which no one key
can capture, paint, hold or release

How many times we have stopped mid-phrase
and have kissed madly – over the top – operatic,
without losing the tone nor the shape of our song

Chagall 2018
(This is a revised excerpt from an earlier piece found here)

Reciting what’s on my mind,
in the same vein,
a similar wave

Around those corners
again, colors seen before,
yesterday’s song on the breeze

What’s new,
or old but newly seen,
or rarely ridden?

Atop looking down
I brace against a steep dive
aloft in the timberline

There’s water in the wind tunnel,
hot pellets belt my face,
sting then drip warm, turning cool

In S-curves at high speeds,
aimed for the apex of the turn each time,
carefully – blending quickly

You are only the gap between fingertips
away from me now, hold on
but the waters let go

I once stood in awe at a sepulcher
for someone I would never have known
if not for you

The water washes away chalky words on the ground
that once appeared to have so much meaning
so soon right before the rains

Boxcars and oxtails, firelights along rails
where hope emblazons faces seen
still from so far away

Hear songs from a fell
in the forest, dark evergreen
intervals of tone – listen

There beyond lies the hem of time
weaving an edge, unraveling
the fabric ahead

I heard her by the pool say she was 55,
her boy was 9 – had older brothers near 30,
and their relationship was a joy to witness

How long have I been
bobbing, suspended
here?

I try to find and ride
the random but plentiful updrafts of life
naturally on offer

The immediacy of sunlight in mid-air,
in flight from out-there to us
is earth’s joy

(Pardon me, I need to step back a moment
to see if I have alit yet again
in the same vein)

Chagall 2018

I knew her when
she was first
untethered

in platinum
as if under black light
she shone

terse, tense
lithe and alive
in a lather of lavender foam

stretched, arced and aching
for a view higher than
her back could bridge

she was rippled, a dance –
fragrant, a tingle, en-pointe

a place where fingertips
might traipse then linger
to dally lightly
hmm…tickle?

she slides to feel
every portion of a body
in motion against another –
to give in to gravity

something about this fabric
in time

I have always conceived her as spun in lights
enrobed in a series of pulses

on
off

growing
ever brighter
and then
ever smaller

to recede:
like a constellation
traces who she really is
via stars once decided on
long ago

again, I’m recalling
when she was first
untethered

Chagall 2018

I started with
She was an acute cutie with an obtuse tushie and complementary angles…
but then I contemplated if that was really
how I wanted to kick off my writing-day
and decided against it

Chagall 2018

She writes poems on a misted mirror,
opens the window to let cold air rush in
– this chills the glass; words stay crisp
and letters take longer to bleed.

Chagall 2018

Would you love me more if you knew me?

Chagall 2018

Tonight, under full moon – the worm moon –
I watch fireworks over Lake Crescent, ascend
in silence save for the hiss of speed that lifts them
high into a cloudless sky painted black clay

sky rockets, mortars, and aerial shells,
blast and report to scare away
the evil spirits among us

powdery stars of the same elements we are,
calcium, sodium, potassium,
cesium, antimony – to name a few –
burn to glow orange, gold, violet,
white, silver, and indigo – among many

tracing the heavens in
peonies, horsetails,
kamuros and willows

accents of apostrophes
of titanium blue sparks

at the end leave tendrils of smoke
filigree under worm moonlight
at human scale so high

so distant from the edge

I feel the curve of the earth,
actually I see it – can sense that
we’re falling

But I really wanted to tell you about
how big and small I feel
both at one time

celebratory
here under the light
of our neighbor courtesy
of our sun

tucked away in this corner
of creation, constrained
to this perimeter I can fathom

a place I call home

Chagall 2018