Skip to content

{ Category Archives } Poetry

Listen to the Birds

When you are outside, listen to the birds. What are they chattering about? Have they found a morsel of food? Are they showing off for a mate? Are they chirping about you? They aren’t singing for you, that’s for certain. You can trick one into a cage and it will still sing, but he is still not singing for you. He is calling out desperately for freedom. Even when he joins the morning chorus of the other birds, he does so because he is still part of their world — the bird world, which he can navigate with grace and skill. And yet you call him stupid for beating his wings against the walls of his cage when there is clearly no escape.

When you go past a farm, look at the animals, hemmed in by fences and tied to trees, trudging through mud and nibbling grass, raising families and sharing the day with friends. Yet at any moment their children and companions could be torn away, and they themselves can be taken off to be killed, raped, or relocated. Their ancestors were great beasts who roamed over large plains and forests, free to raise their families, follow their friends, and fight their enemies. Yes, they were hunted by predators, but they could trust to their strength and skill to defend themselves — both sides had a chance. Now they are merely slaves. Their lives are dictated by the whims and desires of human beings instead of their own, and they are cut off from the worlds in which they had power.

To make kings our prisoners does not make us greater than kings. It makes us small indeed.

2009 02 18 Comments (0)

Alone in the Breeze

Sleepy afternoon eyes
Legs still from moving
Thinking slow like light diffusion
Alone in the breeze
And wanting nothing else.

2008 05 02 Writing Comments (0)

Tree Sellers

The truck with all the trees
Rolls slowly down the street.
The gypsy calls
To sell! The trees!
But no one comes to buy
And the truck just rolls on by.

2008 04 28 Writing Comments (0)

The Place

There is a place that I know,
where I like sometimes to go,
on a hill near the sea
where the warm winds blow.

There are raised beds of vegetables,
carrots and peas,
little tomatoes and silky-leaved greens,
fine herbs and spices and colorful beans.

It’s dappled in sunlight and rustling leaves,
fragrant from flowers and fruit-bearing trees.
There are apples and olives, almonds and plums,
ripe for the picking when the right season comes.

The light of the morning and the late afternoon
filter through windows and fill all the rooms.
The rain, when it falls, plays most delicate tunes.

The honey wood floor sings soft on my feet
as I hum to myself and pick out my seat
on the low lazy steps by the windowsill ledge
with bread sweet with fruit from the blueberry hedge.

Then I lay in the grass under swaying bamboo
reading stories from books in a dress just as blue
as the sky between clouds forming great curlicues.

I sleep then with insect wings brushing my face,
dreaming that I only dream of this place.
A bright little house on a hill near the sea,
where living and laughter find someplace to be.

2008 01 19 Writing Comments (3)

A Winter Morning

I awake to the muffled sound of snow
One thin frame betwixt warm and chill,
The smell of soft blankets beckoning dreams
As animate static holds the world still.

2008 01 15 Writing Comments (1)

Penny Box

Lips apart
Flashing teeth
Another world
Sugared thoughts

Small regrets
Penny wishes
Playing light
Languid shade

Another world
Playing light
Collecting thoughts
An empty box

Hanging sheets
Hanging stars
Wind-chime leaves
Lips apart

2007 11 13 Writing Comments (0)

Cry

Let your self fade away
and the light inside joins the sun
and shines out like a beacon;

Innocence is gained, not lost.
Cry.
The waters of blood are moving;

The dirty become more clean
and become transparent in the washing
and the blood moves into the forest.

2006 08 09 Writing Comments (0)

God is an Electron

When religion and science meet,
the world gets turned inside out and
I want to move to New Zealand where
I am a child and
God is an electron.

2006 08 09 Writing Comments (0)

Hay

He looked at us
Almost taunting
Took his head back
And laughed.
It roared through the hills
And canyons
Changing the water into ice.
We fled
Our hearts full of fear

For ourselves.

He chased us
Through the villages
We were pins
And he simply crushed
the haystacks.

The colors in the sky
Were green
Horrible
At some point one of us

(I’m not sure which one)

Stopped running.
He looked at him
And took his head back
And laughed.
It melted the sky
and hills
and canyons.
But we still fled
Minds filled with hate.

Our hearts full of fear.

2006 08 09 Writing Comments (0)

Sakura Rain

Rain bullets
Shooting down to stone
Tearing the blossoms
Ripping off the petals.
They fall,
Weighted,
No longer dancing to spring.

2006 08 09 Writing Comments (0)