poems from this week

 Fire Whispers

Words like this are not often spoken

like a secret in a voice of whispered breath.

She told me 

what father told her:

that the cloud was not a cloud,

the the scent was not our stove,

then, tearfully, that the younger one was found.

For, when there’s smoke there’s fire,

which licks at limbs and twigs without a care;

and it’s headed straight for us.

Winter Stage 

I will arise and go now, and go back to green river,

where people have left their painted marks upon the summer camp ruins:

mounted boat paddles splashed with sweet-sour hues of green and pink and orange, the remnants of the summer children carved into corners. 

Where, usually, the elderly couples trek 

over rain scented rotting sticks and glance at eachother with young eyes,

and where fledgling laughter swirls like the eddies.

The water runs fast in the winter, that unkind season

when the paths gone of beating hearts

and become too quiet to bear.

I remember walking along the sun spoked path

under the winding low branches

listening for the morbid creatures of the cold.

In winter, I made this place my home.

The place where I knew I’d see no one

and I could freely fill the empty air with my own voice:

“Hinei ma tov umanayim, 

shevet achim gam yachad,”

how wonderful it is for us to be together,

or something like that,

and yet, I am wonderfully alone.

Happy June

It’s June again, and so the children must fall 

upon the grass in weariness or 

in the rushing abandon of summer.

It’s June again, so I must tread to the man-made stones

and place another pebble upon the pile 

and try to remember 

what is buried

under the dusty knoll 

where one summer child plays eternally

in dreams or in darkness. 

It’s June again, so I must remember.

It’s June again, so I will place

my hand upon my beating heart

and feel it grow tired

then feel it grow silent

and watch as the poems float away.

Maybe, once, I could have spoke my sorries to the lapping waves

or calmed the incessant whispering with book-shaped-pills 

(or pill-shaped-books), and yet 

it is June again, so it is not so simple.

Because June has her quiet hands 

grasping like an ending

around my bruised neck;

and I know from her reflection 

that she is finally happy.