A pinball plunger is pulled
torque builds tension, drives a blue planet hurtling
Yet to achieve status quo
but already we are dying
What a sad lot
done but barely begun
Expansion wraps
central stars implode
planets light up
critical mass
the multiverse shifts
orbits combine
new suns enjoy
15 minutes of fame
We are domino
tip us watch the long ripple
beget life everywhere
a taper to kindle
We are seeds
oh, how testy we are
Chagall 2015/2018
i return to my device and the word application asks
want to save? implying my previous work unsaved,
i reply Yes for i trust my earlier self enough
to have made some excellent changes
Chagall 2017
Once we count the stars, what then
will remain to sustain our love?
© Chagall ∞
No word is as lavender, in scent or color, is in life,
as a film is longer than a poem or a sigh is,
pointillists revel in innuendo, a pout once hidden
behind a shoulder, turns as time turns, twice bitten,
nipped on by lips and a tongue most tender in touch as in life
as a year is longer when newer as younger was a smile
awash in sun that clouds had hidden
away behind serious-nimble strata
upon cheeks
rained down like kisses, a softer sense, what’s ahead within
dappled then mottled, the shadows of waving leaves, offstage: the sun,
adept, persistent, a beacon perhaps, a sentry, a guard on the nod,
a star
There is no creation more possible than this one
she flies laughing-deflating, a wisp of her vanishing self,
a balloon losing air, she is ground around figure once was,
and no one is she, in blood nor marrow, as in life
as a day is longer than a poem or a sigh was.
© Chagall ∞
Here at the center of all creation, light must pass
through me to arrive on the other side
© Chagall ∞
I cup strawberries in my hand under a stream of freezing water
The sun’s heat, stubborn at first, relents and leaves the fruit
© Chagall ∞
Let there be light:
plea or command?
© Chagall ∞
Yesterday morning I took down an old dead ash tree
that had presided over the middle of the backyard
for fifty years or so. In the evening, with a tea
in hand, I sat there and eyed the space where the
tree had only just stood, and noticed a bird who kept flying
to and from the stump, alit in sawdust, back to perch
on a carved fence-head nearby. After a while I understood
the bird’s plight of my making. We both nestled
there throughout the night, under thinly-aired twilit skies
awash in constellations, anxious for the birth of new trees.
© Chagall ∞
I am awash in
incidental oregano.
© Chagall ∞
The tapping whisper of rain,
Gulls soar, serifs against the long stretch
Of sky and land, the mosaic face of water,
Morning air, thin and cold, early day
Mist envelops always, hope is desire
To release, to touch the atmosphere,
To mean the words yet to find tongues,
Tone recedes into tones receding, the far edge
Where filaments unravel into the empty, void
Unless stamped otherwise, a puddle to stomp,
A bright yellow-slicker, the tapping whisper
of rain.
© Chagall ∞
Alphabet City 