Solitude romances with her voice,
That signals to the outside world a place,
Of daring yellow sunshine and a choice
That revels in a core unpeopled space.

Loneliness, in contrast, is a mute,
With scarce a well-worn whisper to his name,
He skulks at midnight shunning all pursuit
And cloaks invisibility with shame.

One grows weary and the other takes the helm,
Before conclusive vict'ry, falls aside,
Confusion threatens then to overwhelm
With grounding promised every change of tide.

How fitting that the two must often dance,
And who will forfeit precedence is chance.

Old sock. Old bag. Old news.

Not me at ninety.

I'll be old as a wild oak
--thrashing in hurricanes
--cracking the sidewalks
roots stroking aquifers
limbs fighting birds for the sky.

Old world. Old age. Old soul.

Rephrasing grace to conjure hope
Where none can yet be heard
Confusion and a fumbling grope
Must substitute for word.

Rephrasing grace to capture heart
Before it steals away
When blue death beckons from the start
And torture welcomes day.

Rephrasing grace to call release
And opt to let her go
Only a fool would name this 'peace'
Where blessing will be foe.

Rephrasing grace, as bitter a sound
As hallowed pulse below the ground.

Presumption is predator's friend.
Picture a lioness, lying in waiting.
No hurry, just hunger and hope.

Now linger on lines of the zebra
Twittering herd, every animal poised like a bird
No hunger, just harried in haste.

(The zebra, lacking considered cognition,
always assumes that it's next.)

In sideline to lioness' vision, a Jeep.
Every one's been to the circus.
Every one's seen the beast come to heel
(And maneless, surely posed less harm than most.)
No hunger, just hubris and hype.
The human, badly anchored, broadly dim
Is much. Too. Slow.

That grace should languish so,
Allow her joy to rust to reel,
And emblem torn and tattered
Silk eroded past appeal.

The premise of foundation,
Clustered round the roll at dawn,
Holds not a candle to the ritual,
From which this devastation's drawn.

The stitches pricked from bloody palm,
That once held pride in hand,
Have long dissolved in battle,
For the Right and for the land.

This flag we wave, our fifty stars
Now trembles as we shriek,
And hoist it as a banner
For the war that soothes the weak.

Descended from gray terror,
Like the anthem of the same,
It may be 'Stars and Stripes Forever',
But her demise becomes our shame.

A symbol first of freedom,
Then of battle, then of war,
She carried grace, too, briefly
As we strode through progress' door.

Now though, return to mourning due,
That grace should languish so,
As she drapes domestic menace,
And scribes stranger into foe.

Wild berries under stricken sky
Cover the wooded lea.
Vines of strawberry, a gorsebush,
A damp briered blackberry patch.
Plush and perky in places
Otherwise scarred by hunters' trail.

There it's trampled and the
Berries blaze in richly
Crumpled sticky evidence of death
From driveway to roadside
A half mile of blood.

The foxhole covered
In wild berries home to cubs who
Howl to stricken sky.

My mother has a temperament of twilight.
All sweetness and laughter early
All cherry reds, banana yellows,
Granny apple green.
Her image a palette of primaries,
Sharp, undisturbed, bright.

The shadow emerges when countered.
As sun grow bold, a voice calls the deep,
Strumming a symphony
Shift minor key.

Even now we reminisce about the day she learned to ride her dusk.
Darkness veiled her eyes,
A shuddering rage engulfed her as
She grappled with new power in
Colours of fire, crimson and ruby and jade.
She learned to like it and to use it and to
Dance to the heart of a wolf.

My mother has a temperament of twilight.
All current and sparks of late,
One more strength to share.

Four children under ten.
Three tin cups.
One rustling bag of logoed food aid rice.

Two empty spaces where parents lay dying.
Two and a half pairs of shoes.
An hour to water, a day's trek to town.

This is Africa unplugged,
Remote just a word meaning distant,
But this place has crossed beyond
Reason to care.

In string theory, next bead over, different chance.
Solar panel lantern
Crankshaft radio
The am band may crackle but it plays.
Digging ponds learned from Peace Corps
Storing seed crops.
Wait for rain.

Wild wind claws at the
Clapboard house
Streaked with dormant ivy
Swirled with autumn dervish leaves.
This is Maine's September
Weather shrill as sirens
Warm breeze drowning in the bay.

Your exit brought the fall.
I gathered storm shutters like daisies
Counting one-he-loves-me
Two-for-none
And hammered winter
Frame by frame.
And hammered winter
Frame by frame.

The salt air tastes like shipwrecks
That have climbed a traitor's shore
With ragged nails and bloody palms.
The ferrous tang competing with the
dimming half-moon sky that arcs my door.
I drink the rusty squall
I inhale moonlight, exhale stars...
This picture you abandoned doesn't need you anymore.