Waiting for Alice

Waiting. Winter concise in tongue says,
“It will never happen. It can’t.”
Black birds chatty squeal
“She’s forgotten, she’s forgotten you” like
playground children in keep-away.
Wood floorboards beneath my spine reason
“Be content in memory, it is enough.”

I listen, and I wait.
Only the snowy owl, rare in visits, winks
“One day, one day. You’ll see.”

Years end like a funeral march, beautiful

It seems, under such disappearing dusk,
years end like a funeral march, beautiful.
Seconds with frozen breath ascend to heaven.
Small lights shimmer then go quietly cold
beneath the pulse of evergreen fingers (undeterred).
Snow swirls patiently to a final resting place
with us who find, with each step, we sink lower,
lower. Soon our family will cover our eyes with
petals and coins. Another year will end.

65846_10151257196488602_1863150935_n

Midnight Streets

We were born to roam midnight streets
to leave sticky notes of jazz on exuberant thighs
stopped beneath streetlights of dancing rays
gnawing here and there, tipping them back, tossing aside.

We die each hour of impending day but
the streets become a blues pulse, thumping. Again,
hold on to night’s desperation and grind slow
into cobblestones content with the hour still late, late, late.

death of a leaf

when the moon is high, there can be
no pity, no regret.
dive into that grave dug for you,
freshly turned soil soft such
welcome respite from a season
spent clinging to… to
summer, hope,
last rays of light as they hit the lowest angle
and bleed across the sky –
there is no shame in lying among the moss and the dead
giving themselves to dirt.
sleep easy before the quiet snow,
one simple silver bell toll at a time,
becomes a burial shroud, so calm, so inevitable.