I Painted an Ocean    
          
I painted an ocean
But always forgot the shore
There were no ships
When I took a close look
It was my isolation
Sailing like the sea waves
I stand alone for centuries
To add the people,
In my voyage
Still, singular I stand
Among strangers
When I try to talk,
It becomes silent monologue outward
The reply comes from the resounding inside,
So I like surreal, something sick
So is all my work
If someone makes my portrait

The Woolly Bear

Along a silvan lane, you spy a critter
creeping with a mission, a woolly bear
fattened on autumn flora. So you crouch,
noting her triple stripes: the middle ginger,
each end as black as space. Her destination
is some unnoticed nook, a sanctuary
from which to calmly greet the fangs of frost,
then freeze, wait winter out — lingering, lost  
in dreams of summer, milkweed, huckleberry.
Though she’s in danger of obliteration
by wheel or boot, your fingers now unhinge her.
She bends into a ball of steel. No “ouch”

The Rooms of Bernadette

With scratching sounds and gnawing sounds
and periodically a squeak,
commensal mammals make their rounds
to search for edibles and seek
a place to nest before the bleak
raw blizzards bluster in. They’ll get
a taste of warmth within a week
inside the rooms of Bernadette.

Wise to the perils on these grounds
(traps, poison, predators), they speak
not just with voices but the nouns
and adjectives of smell. They reek
of things they’ve eaten, each unique,
life-or-death. A breach will let

The Woolly Bear

Along a silvan lane, you spy a critter
creeping with a mission, a woolly bear
fattened on autumn flora. So you crouch,
noting her triple stripes: the middle ginger,
each end as black as space. Her destination
is some unnoticed nook, a sanctuary
from which to coolly greet the fangs of frost,
then freeze, wait winter out — lingering, lost  
in dreams of summer, milkweed, huckleberry.
Though she’s in danger of obliteration
by wheel or boot, your fingers now unhinge her.
She bends into a ball of steel. No “ouch”

With its eyes like cauldrons
brimming with molten lava
It looks at me
searing holes in my soul,
Its tongue like a provoked viper
lashes out at me spewing poison
Its claws hold my heart
in a vise-grip and keep squeezing
Its shadow falls across my life
imbuing it with melancholy
that I am not quite able 
to shrug off
Pushing me into an
existential realm of despair
Triggering chaos
Eroding trust
Dragging me into
the abyss of moral oblivion
As I am unable to rein in
my straying thoughts;
 

She looks at me, crystal-eyed
She is Jodie Foster post Panic Room
calm voice, stoic face
“So what is time to you?”
“How do you feel about time?”
In my mind I think about
the million and one things I could do
with my time that do not include
talking about time, but I say
Time
is never enough
is not within my control
And we let time pass
between us
the silent pauses like change
falling through pocket holes
lost in the seams
ghostly jingles.
 
And I take my time
because it seems I can
and wonder if I could be so brave as

Can not put (much) faith in horoscopes:
Orion reveals no revelations
Nevertheless, looking through telescope
Scanning cloudless sky for constellations
Targeting twinkling fluctuations
Earth and Beyond-Earth interconnected
Loving thought(s) and other observations
Little Dipper and Cancer detected
Aries and Aquarius neglected
Taurus sings in sad chorus with Leo
I see your outline, as unexpected
Obsessed with sky like Galileo
Noting retrogrades of Mercury, Mars
Seeking signs of our future in the stars(?)

Like a nest on a little church
indented in the rocks.
The sky is low.
The twitch 
of the air flower-beds –
the passing angels.
And voices like gushing
streams; rivers before the sea.
The day is silent.
The body is growing up –
some birds are thronging.