With us
Morning spreads
across the painted floor
and sometimes, half-awake,
I’ll meet a clarity so obvious:
a fragile, brief undarkening.
Then later, sitting quiet as lilies,
in a garden soft with shadows:
sudden swift epiphany.
Our need for pain
for poetry
for love
acceptance of what is.
Astonishing
to make sweet sense
of this rare music
understand we’re not alone.
That we have never been.
An angel always comes.
(from Between the Words)
The way it is
Rain, falling on a velvet night;
moon wrapped in a shroud.
The sky poured out on
trees and empty streets:
tonight there seems no end to it.
Murmured water scatters,
soft and spitting, at the glass:
on and on, a punctuated prophecy.
Something is about to happen:
some feat of transubstantiation,
crimson ripe astringency about to burst.
I cannot walk beyond the mirror:
penetrate the labyrinth of the past.
But neither can I peel the layers
of this fragile leaf apart.
For everything is intricately joined.
You are the flip side of my coin:
that same currency involved.
The rain falls on and on
and there’s no sleep.
For this is how things are.
(from Journey)