along the harbor
where green sea goes gray
on an autumn day
 
as it’s turned half winter
now in the sun
and the pairs form
 
of cold light and mannequins
that mouth out with their frozen lips
of something yet to come

Astound me. Bring me to my knees awash And gaping at the simple flex of dawn. Transform me. Let me clench a fist and squash My inner cynic's ostentatious yawn. Beguile me. Lavish me with primrose scent As crisp and sweet as apples freshly picked. Instill in me the purest wonderment, The joy my brain keeps trying to constrict. Pursue me. Don't allow me to deny Sensations so embarassingly true, The tears that claw unbidden from my eye When indrawn breath can knock my world askew. Alive despite each cringing second thought, I rise to meet the day, prepared or not.

We queue in bright November sun,
outside Town Hall,
beaming our innocence.
That night, we take
a savored bottle from the fridge,
chill two fluted glasses,
keep the bottle closed
and wait.
At eight, my daughter texts:
I’m worried, and I respond:
It’s early, Dear,
the states will soon turn blue.
At ten, she texts again: 
When will it be
not early?  
I wonder too,
all that day, and the next,
while the champagne
stays under pressure.

 
Sensing at last that the voice
of the soul is not the eyes,
but the lines beneath them,
this map of falling flesh,
I cover these streets,
footfalls on voiceless stone.
I think of Rodin, the bright windows,
the statues in the high room,
of stone about to speak.
 
Somewhere, lover, you lie,
senses disarrayed,
stoned dreams upon the brain,
the streets beneath your eyes
softened by sleep. If I listen
I can hear you breathing,
each breath a weightless tone
that rises from your lips.
 
At dawn in the alleyway I wait.

Dihydrogen Monoxide

The molecules commingling in your glass
once swirled in clouds of interstellar gas,
surrendered to a leisurely collapse
and drenched a world whose pair of crystal caps
interns them under sleds and fleecy shoes,
while warmer zones allow them to infuse
the stems and stalks of your Kukicha tea
or trickle up your favorite apple tree.
A cornice softens on the Matterhorn,
hastens toward Green Lake to be reborn
a mirror amid the heights, evaporates,
condenses in a stretch of blue, then waits