A

Botany 

for 

Silk 

Blossoms 

Half of me lives 

on its own now,

tired of being shaped

by what the other 

half might give. 

In fact, we 

no longer

use the word “I”

without irony.

We’re both too

full of ourselves.

Ours is 

a gardener’s ethic,

rising early 

to work 

with the light.

I weed my mind

using imaginary tools

because I know that

Hope is a garden

and attention, 

a spade.

Between us 

we are both 

botanist and flower;

planter and blade.

But the other half

is vaguely narcoleptic,

prone to bouts of sleep,

with his hidden blueprint;

a negative of roots

beneath ground

whose receptivity

leave passageways 

open

so that anything

might arrive.

That said,

the dark brings out

its dead, a village

roused by plague.

So much death

is sure to make 

things grow

in spades.

If daylight’s

a natural disinfectant, 

I am my own medicine.

Just as lavender 

needs contact

for its sap 

to reach out

through needles

into thin air,

we feel with fingers

a lingering bent;

unlike silk

what is alive

can flower

and write

our name

in it's scent.

All plants

take the weather 

personally,

as if simpatico.

Perhaps they practice 

hearing clouds

arriving often

as they do

without fanfare,

marching softly

in their cotton parade.

Then hear them 

disassemble

into rain,

they themselves

made as much

for blue 

as chalk 

for slate.

For better or worse

like us, clouds

carry their lives 

with them

wherever they go,

even if no sky is ever

the same as another,

they never question

the motives of 

the other.

Maybe if we could

in time

stop needing to make

everything our own,

with no right 

to ownership,

everything on loan,

we might shape

what we give

from even thinner air,

our memories

more than

mere merchandise

abandoned at the fair. 

Nor is it fair to others

to be carting around

our recollections 

like so much

bric-a-brac

at the church bazaar,

when for some,

art is no more

than silk flowers

in a jar.

08/10/21

 

Last Boat Out of Lilliput

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell

 that encloses your understanding. 

It is the bitter potion by which the

 physician within you heals your sick

 self. And so I trust the physician and

 drink his remedy.”

                        ~Kahlil Gibran

I’m grateful for gray skies,

I can’t lie;

the sun reeks of privilege

and I’m nothing if not

prodigal. 

What else are we

to make of 

a sun worshiper

who comes to prefer

the rain

and chooses chalk

over slate?

I’m trying 

to be willing

to be vulnerable, 

a ghost plotting 

to raise the living

rap by tap. 

Whose mind

is a spookhouse

that haunts

itself.

My better

thoughts

appear out of 

nowhere;

an art

for want of

a billowing sheet

to act as a sail.

Without me my dreams

can’t exist.

So they’ll do anything

to keep me here.

Like another

Gulliver

I catch

their arrows tethered

to threads 

whizzing nightly

over my head.

I’d like to hang 

onto nothing

but am

unable to let go.

I close my eyes 

yet continue

to see,

my memory clinging

like muscle 

to a bone.

I step over 

myself.

We pin our hopes 

on something new

except that

all new things

become old 

the moment 

we claim them.

Why trudge through 

life as if it 

weren’t a poem?

Why tread on lilies?

My diary says

the day I fell 

in love

I fell ill.

My symptoms

more than

apparent,

were nothing

if not devastating;

I was afraid I

wouldn’t survive.

That I would grow

small by osmosis

in the Beloved's

presence.

At the same time

ordinary things

were imbued

heretofore by

chimeras.

Though slammed

to the ground,

my head yanked

up by my hair

and dust kicked

into my eyes,

inside my chest

a cacophony 

of fireflies

lit up my

insides.

I grappled

with the possibility

of escape even

as I realized

my own 

ground zero;

I was no longer

of the slightest 

importance.

I had been

subsumed,

one sole

emotion

eclipsing

every

feeling.

If green were life

and red were death,

I reached for blue.

But the ones

who know not 

what they do

are never porous.

What they want is

of no importance.

Complaining is

an empty gesture 

signifying nothing.

Crowning me 

a makeshift King,

utterly pointless.

All I can do

is pry myself open

in search

of more patience.

This is how I will 

come to terms 

with

solitude.

Discarding myself

along with all 

the other things

I thought would

save me.

What use is innocence

that begins in mourning?

Everyone steps over it,

a dead beetle unmourned

on the garden path.

So I try 

to wring truth

from yet

another dream.

The bed a relief map,

I am the demarcation 

between night and day.

I slowly remember 

my body

even as I savor 

its nightmares

unspooling like a negative 

of un-capturable

phantoms.

I regain my bearings.

clenching my feet,

stretching out my legs,

as if I were chained 

to a rack in some light-

deprived dungeon.

On return, 

safe in my room,

I pour my wine

back into its bottle

and wonder how

after all I’ve done, 

the arc of age

has returned me

to this

innocence.

8/3/21

 

Making the Most

of the Notion

That at Any Moment

I May Drop Down Dead

When I was young I loved

pretending I was about to die.

Nothing appealed more

to my sense of adventure.

I would practice falling

down the stairs

when company came over.

If I found myself

fortunate enough

to be out in a storm,

I would trudge

against the wind

shielding my eyes

from the stinging snow

as though my life

were in utmost danger.

When I got sick

with a mild cold,

I became a veritable

damsel in distress,

(despite being a boy).

And did I tell you?

I’d have given

anything for

a broken leg.

Just imagine learning

to walk again,

struggling up from the wheelchair

in a sand blasted beach house

by the sea.

Now, in mid-life,

the thought of suddenly dying

arouses

a wish to work on myself.

Mind you, its not a thought

I think with my brain,

I simply receive it

as from a distance,

as if I were letting myself

agree to go on

being invented.

With no need

to cling to furniture

to hold this moment 

in place,

I manage to inhabit

more than my body

with absolute authority.

After all, so much of us

exists in a state

of frozen amputation;

upside-down

icebergs

afloat in an

all-consuming

 sky.

Who else has ever

wondered whether

there were too many stars

for our own good?

How better to get

to the bottom 

of myself than

by disintegrating

every night

in order to move 

more freely?

Now that time

resides inside me,

I reserve the right

to consider my life

an entire world

in itself.

But if true, 

it may

prove imperative 

to accept everything

that has happened

(or will happen)

as integral to

one’s own particular

nature. 

As for me,

the mark of

a great adventure

has always been

a matter of life 

and certain death.

7/7/21

 

Please God,

Don't Give Up 

On Me

God is not judgmental,

but his rules have filtered down.

Those of us who have sinned

want a God who understands,

who has lived,

who has loved,

who has suffered,

and doesn't judge.

Please God, 

do not judge me

like a fifties movie.

I’m not an archetype,

I’m a man who weeps

for the beauty born

from a walk in the woods.

A man who no longer hikes

a perfect forest.

A man who remembers

how to love

gift by 

green gift.

7/5/21

 

My Skivvies

Lay like a discarded Dear John letter from an x-con determined to start a new life,

a squashed white rabbit on a Carolina backroad rolled by a speeding Buick,

a page torn from the diary of a lonely depressive wishing to remain anonymous,

a seagull blown so far off course that it holds no hope of returning to the sea,

an envelope stamped with the lingering smells that identify a day’s hard work,

a damp map of the moon flaccid as beach litter after a dense morning fog,

a snow drift sullied by a lost dog who’ll trace his way home by a series of leaks,

an albino snake skin shed like a bridal veil at the foot of an empty marriage bed,

a used handkerchief dropped by a cleric on his way to inspire a congregation,

an abandoned white lily kicked to the curb by mourners at a funeral procession,

the love letter of a pained man who felt he should have said these things instead.

~from Poems I Mustn’t Show Others