Poems

Curves describe everything.
The bend of the Earth,
the moving angle of attack
as an ocean wave washes ashore.
the sketch of foam left behind
The sigh of love.
A trail of clothes.
The reach of trees into the sky,
or the trail below keeping elevation
The movement of the wind,
its description on canvas.
I can bind the pinpricks in night’s firmament with a straight line
and yet over time, the stars break my bounds
Even light bends to gravity’s will
encircling mass with a peek around
It’s the way in nature

Stretching every sense,
every nerve
Listening. Hoping. Praying.
Straining underneath it all.
That I’ll hear just a whisper
Of your love

Stories untold fill the book of stars
Each group a player in night’s cinema
I wonder this while dreaming in an open meadow
Waiting for Pleiades rise
watching the dipper’s sink to the north
Orion’s hunt
Coyote’s trick
If I could see just over the edge

I didn’t plan to make the leap
Time came together to make it happen
Propelled by a look
A perfect storm baiting
Leading, pushing, pleading
Toward the unexpected
The inevitable
with you

stars in the sky
Just hopeful pinpricks of faraway light
Beckoning onward
Signs in the night
Guiding the lost
Pointing back home
in an ocean of life
I imagine their light
Shimmering on the waves
As ancient mariners
Laid course by their certain rising
Discovering clouds of stars
Creating a stellar mythology
From strange celestial groupings
Noting the setting of the constant circumpolars
As new heavens opened in the south
Above the white beaches of faraway
Looking to science’s asterisms
To lead to calm local harbors

There are moments
You know them
Where time splits
What if moments
Between this and that
Unexpected encounters
Where choices hang
Branches of fate
Where we are and never were
Seconds where a thing is created
More than memory
experience gained
Paradise lost
Eternal heard
Shifts so profound that we linger
Later
on their implications
From their base
all our futures imagined

From a distance
all stars look the same
dots of light
hues of red, blue, yellow and white
some bright, many just a flicker,
Flames in the night
all pinpricks in the deep dark
but up close
their stories unravel
a few huge, bright
others small and light
embers just beginning
ash long dead

Why do you call to me
With a scent of honeysuckle
And warm willow
I felt you long nights ago
Watching the stars wheel
You crouched beside me
While deer filed past
Warmed me in the deep grass
Following me into ancient woods
All so you could sing to me in the sigh of trees
revel in my joy of warm rocks after a cool swim
I was young, barely noticeable
And still you spoke of a bond
Of mother, father
Beyond family
Intimate
You revealed a great mystery
Of a place set aside and special
Timeless, eternal stories
Set in the stones, twigs and grasses
Under storms, sunshine and starlight

I wander in moonlight
Silver beams streaming between
Boughs of oak and pine
Picking dreams among the stars
A shadow between days
Waking to a sunrise full of promise