Moon

We all have one,
All of us.
Silver in our skies,
Lifting us from the sea.
The slower ones,
We'll wait a billion years for them,
We of the dawn.
How alone we feel,
How pitiful our imaginings of a universe full of talk,
Rich in minds.
We listen and we call
But there is only silent emptiness we can't explain.
We all have a moon,
We treaders of the dawn,
Calling us from our sleep an eon too soon.
The universe is ours for now,
Not locked in deathly silence,
But inarticulate with youth
While we, with our moons,
Must wait.

Coffee Break

Stare the other way.
The floor.
That looks interesting.
A glance, no,
Look away.
What's that on the table?
Fascinating, fire extinguishers.
Eye, contact, look away.
What's that out the window?
Trees, the blinds, compelling.
Sip hot tea, avoiding gazes,
Furtive, shy, trying to find,
A safe place to look.
The wall? Eyes down.
No! Don't stare there.
Gulp your tea,
Escape elsewhere.
Inside, daydreaming.
Silence, cups steaming.
Conversation sparks,
Never finding tinder.
Minutes, minutes.
It ends.
Cups on the trolley,
Back to work.

I'm so glad we have
A few minutes each day
For social interaction.
It makes
Such a difference.

Collateral

Carter torn upon the wheel
Burn in bone.
Eat at mind eye scald
Called too soon
The laughter to another place.
What is balance to a heart
Unsound, unfound among the twists of genesis.
Untold upon the face,
Loved all from start
And fading into dark, unknown.
Call, have him back.
Why tilt to fill with earth
and sad to fill my heart.
Slips away life so fragile yet
So we turn away
And never see the dark grin
Behind the laughing day.
Give my heart to all the more
For losing one who never knew.
My silence fills, remorse
I break
For never having said my heart to you.

Sea, Horse

Rein-up, stand.
Warm clouds of equine steamy breath,
All a tremble in the muscle,
And the sun, break low at setting.
Golden like the sand.
Each hoof, touch, imprint, toss,
Small packets, scattered in their passage,
O'er the one small bird in a million years,
Brown, forever, strand.

Take a deep breath

What deep beauty hides
In the everyday?
What hidden jewel
Cries out for attention?
The crystalline perfection of a virus
Is misery for higher creatures.
The red-eyed, coughing, retching ache
Of transmission.
For as long as we've been breathing,
We've been coughing and sneezing.
Us vertebrates, that is.

July

How hot it is again today,
The way the road just flows away.
The thistledown, the flies, the frown
On faces gaze averted down.
My shadow-dweller silhouette
In terracotta, chalk, and jet.
The blue and silver cauterize
Bare limb, and stone, and leaf, and eyes.

First Daffodil

Fanfare yellow transitory
Dance to the wind
Blow music by slow pools
Gaze eyeless at ducks
Mope into the water's mirror,
Broken by a crisp packet.
Hunch-shouldered
Too early
Hungry for company.