Behind me the sound
Of leftover rumbling
Now a hollow bellow
Is just an echo
Of the night's stormy violence

Satiated and passing
The morning air yawns serene
And smells earthy
Of worms and ozone
So the gentle Sunday emerges
Steamy-like from the moist ground

I am awash in a pale golden light
From the rising sun
And the sudden idea that
I am witness to time's newest day

A glistening shimmer
Across the hazy fog
At the schoolyard
A path leads my eyes to the first light
And all the potential of another beginning

This compulsion of a stubborn earth
To revolve
Keeps a poet busy
Considering "new day" metaphors
And unique ways to express them

And also the agreement
(to which I never actually agreed)
That calls one to service
To recount daybreak
As it has from the genesis
Of a brute's first
Rapt attention to the buttery warmth
And ensuing pictographs
Of sunshine
After a storm

As it's always been
I am also compelled
To describe what I see
As if it's not been written
(Like the repetition of dawn)
A billion times before

In a Stairwell

It crystalized a moment in time
And silenced the yearning
At least briefly
A relief at last
Where fingers followed the outline
Of a forearm
Touching the telltale
Coursing vessels
Beating at the wrist
A rhythm of want
Slipped sweetly into the hand
of another
And joined finger over finger
Weaving not just a holding
But effecting an ascension
To the next place
Of being together

Sometimes you write about nothing
because nothing is all you have
This is easy to explain
In that the other day
I was trying to imagine my own mind
And what came to me was the image of my brain
Several sections of it’s matter
Appeared as blank splotches
Like empty, dark water

I was saddened because I thought to myself
That these are perhaps the areas
of the things
I can no longer remember
And will never recollect again
I countered more hopeful, “Maybe one day I might make a good Buddhist.”
Mindlessness being a virtue

The past, the present,
names, faces,
times, places,
words, memory
drop from the synapses pattern
and plop into the blank spots
drowned in emptiness of the forgotten

Maybe this is what death is like.

Perhaps this is a harbinger to death
A symbol of our certain demise
An untested aspect of biology
An intelligent trigger latent
And ancient
That makes the coming sleep easier to accept.

Dendrites shrivel like tulip stamen
after the season has passed
Brain cells are bubbles
blown to heaven rising
that pop
Dissipating all their energy
released by a common pressure
and gone

Drawing a blank
“I don’t remember”
Or “I can’t recall”
Is a more like a quieting

Facelessness
Namelessness
And less nostalgia
Create a simpler exit

It is not just an ending of memory
These images of silent black puddles
But perhaps it’s a source of ease:
Worry unwrought
Beauty unheld
Expectation undone
Life unfilled
Unprecious
Unfragmented

There was a time that I thought
She had died on purpose
After the many times she tried before
I thought at last she'd succeeded

Looking back now I am remembering
It all differently though
Because you can remember things differently
Even if the events remain
Unchanged

It could be a matter of perspective
Maybe of maturity
A re-imagining once
Coping has been learned

Because now I see clearly
The freshly baked cookies
On the counter
The flat of pansies and potting soil
On the garage floor
The clothes recently purchased
Their receipt
And the gifts and gift wrap
On the table

All of these thing imply
A return
Not a suicide

And what I see in particular
And most often
Is the carelessly discarded purple t-shirt
Rumpled on the vanity

The one she'd put on
Earlier that morning
Maybe after her shower
Or her last cup of coffee

And she had it on while buying
Flowers and gifts and
Clothes that didn't fit
Probably even while baking cookies

And it was the one she wore while
Visiting an old neighbor
Who impulsively snapped
A polaroid that day

My mother's last live photo
The one taken
In the purple t-shirt,
Her final witness

As the water receded
what was left on the sand was a froth
green, brown, alive
with bubbles
silent crackling
millions of tiny universes
popping one by one
absorbing into the ancient remains
of animals once breathing
their food and shelter, too
now ground into firmament
beautiful wet warmth, firm
beneath my feet
walking on the ages..
Is this what we are to you,
Leftovers of a wave?