Homecoming Song

--for my cousin, the silent one 

In the stifling 
Heat of this, the longest 
Day of the year,

While incessant cicadas 
Fiddle fickle time away, 
Just as your coffin is 

Being lowered, to hear 
From out of the shadows 
Of wind-swept cypresses, 

That one lone 
Nightingale's uplifting 
Air! 

 

 

Subjunctive

In the mood 

To wonder 

At the wondrous

As if it always were 

No wonder 

It was.

 

 

Huxley In Gaza

All the witnesses 

Were present 

But no one able 

To distinguish which ones 

Were eyeless.

 

Twofold

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. 

--St. Augustine 

My love's my ballast; 

Wherever and whenever 

I find myself 

Weightless, she takes me 

Over the moon with her, twice 

As weightless as before.

 

 

Windfall Inclination Complex

--for John Phillips 

the unheeded 

word is what 

we think 

we never hear, 

though it keeps 

calling for us 

to draw nearer, say 

to the wind- 

swept pines 

shaping all that 

we wish to hear.