3 Haikus || An Oblation of Things

Beneath the red eaves
a spider’s-web sail unfurls
leeward, boughs bending

Moss shimmers silver
old Sol sets in the branches’
autumn silhouette

I lie under leaves
the sanctuary above
earthen priest below

It is Always Late Here

And so we dodge the rain-soaked
leaves as they fall – or we don’t;
regardless we approach the wallpaper-houses
plastered with autumn’s gore. We shed

the decay only to don this thin
skin naked to the stale heated air.
Here we sing the refrain “Amen, come
Thou long expected Jesus, come.”

December, you are the clothesline of souls
strung above the hearth. Above the fire
we drip with rain until we are clean,
dry and we with our voices are thin.

Silent night. We have no say in the matter.

Earthen Vessel

The port is still. The rain lays down
the restless remains of ship-wakes.
Not a thick rain; vague, like the dust
from grade-school chalkboards.

I run from east to west along Jericho Beach
toward the Pacific, which I’ve never seen.
Not really.

The clouds unfurl, sweeping across the masts –
the harbor is a shadowbox. The bow lights
shimmer in halos through the rain
and reflect from cloud-bottom to sea
and back again. Our shadowbox world
is small.

May we find peace in the periphery.

Perhaps we have looked up too often.
Perhaps the clouds teach us aspirations
more befitting to our human nature
than flight. If we are dust after all, how can we
return once we’ve left the dust behind?
We are nothing!

We are nothing
if not married to the ground.

A couple stands on the beach, pointing
to the prows anchored to the seabed,
content to keep their feet dry.

Trance

She is the tune of a violin, exciting the air about her

like a stream pouring from hills crowned in mist –

slowly, quietly; a gentle presence like a lovely ghost.

 

She reverberates in the firelight with eyes like almonds.

Her gaze pours into me like Niagara into a cave

until the dam closes, she is gone, and I am awake.

 

She is a white moonlit gown hung on an open windowpane,

haunting me as silver rays filter through the lace.

Her shadow passes over the floorboards. I look; nothing.

 

My vision of her wavers like a meadow in autumn’s breath.

I can see the wind-waves in the bronze grass, but of her

I find only footprints and crystallized laughter in the soil.

 

She resonates the fibers binding my spirit to sinew,

like a cello played between the final second of a day,

and the first of the next. I watch the second hand,

 

entranced.

Copper Symphony

A candle shines through the doorway. My fingers still hold a smoldering wick, burning my skin like a glove. “I am home,” I say, to no one in particular – maybe the bricks need to hear it. My shadow dances opposite the flame across their mason-faces. I am a mirror to the naked world.

Above my head, behind me, there is a window. Against it beats rain softly, caressing the glass and whispering of colder weather. It is still in this room, where the candle twists. The music has stopped. My piano lies dormant and expectant. I do not think sound is necessary, here.

Flame: incessant and full of mirth. It spreads beneath the carpet and behind the walls. My body feels no heat, but the candle I see bows and rises excitedly. The air changes; charged. If I were a storm, I would have lightning for arms. Rise. Stand. My feet glow with electricity. I cannot tell you whether it is my hands or the tongues of flame that bring the piano to life, but there is music with the laughter of a fiddle.

An island forms outside the window, as the rain builds up worlds on the pavement. What wonders there are in autumn! My fingers rest; my reflection stands to make amends while I admire the candle in the other room.

Stepping into a Lightless Basement

And the headaches get worse,

like the shock of alcohol to the mind –

a wisp of thought draining the dregs of

poison and remedy,

            remedy and poison.

 

The mind is slipping, so society puts it.

Words like leaves only lasting a season,

and I remember the sound of autumn;

dry things like leaves, twigs and

forsaken liquor bottles,

            forsaken glass.

 

Funny how our eyes search the darkness

for that which it will only see in the light.