Lightning in darkness
The sky is heavy with rain
All morning, we dream.
Abandon alarms.
Silence is the first song heard
Listen deeply now.
Eventually, we laugh
until the oxygen runs out.
The sound of your voice
disrupts the silence
of the afternoon and grows like thunder.
By the time you catch your breath,
you and I are
breathless again.
Laughter is the language
we speak in between
looks across the room.
I read your eyes
between the lines.
Cycles of joy
move through
the atmosphere
and your laughter
repeating like a record
is all I ever want to hear.
Invitations to love come in small packages.
Think of the earned cat nuzzle against the leg
first thing in the morning. Think of the gentle steam
rising off the coffee leaving the palm of the
woman who chose to rise early enough to
make you coffee in the first place. Think of
the sky overflowing with light. Think of the
morning wind bending the trees into
music notes. Think of the day like a jukebox.
Think of the small truths. Think of the
hundreds of roots that live in the soil
of the soul. Think of the thousands
of invitations arriving every day, in small
and simple ways, each with your name,
waiting to be opened.
A Minnesota jury found a man guilty of murder
That man was a cop
I won’t say his name. This poem isn’t for him.
The cop is a murderer, beyond a reasonable doubt.
The whole world watched this
cop kill an unarmed black man
George Floyd was his name.
Some people prayed the cop would see
something called Justice,
which in America, means more than one thing.
Tuesday April 20, 2021
I sat in my house, eyes glued to the TV screen
after days of putting this cop on trial.
The Judge read the verdict
Guilty, Guilty, Guilty.
Where to go from here? It’s not my place to say.
I just made a promise to myself
not to keep quiet
when history is being made.
Eyes above the treeline, I measure my breath
with each step on the concrete. When I look
down at my feet, I’m too focused on where I am,
not where I am going, where I’m supposed to be.
The air in my lungs lunge out of me like exhaust.
I trust my blood
running and flowing like
my desire to cross
the imaginary finish line of the next traffic light.
I am astonished at the way the body moves
and how each day I show up for myself,
I continue the marathon
of being alive.
For Adela
A simple Sunday. Spring cleaning and soft rain. Driving with the windows down. Cool air on the other side of every closed door. Feeding lazy cats. A sound track to stifle the silence. Your hand in mine. The promise of a hot meal. Sundown Moscow mules to fuel the buzz of young love. Your green eyes at dusk. The two of us together. My voice and yours blend into the wind. We change the world around us. At least our love does. Just a simple Sunday when anything is possible and so is nothing. So much to do. But I let go of time. Decided eternity wasn’t impossible. I just choose a moment, any moment, with you, and I refuse to let it end. Ask me for the evidence of my love and use this poem as an exhibit.
Thinking of you feels
More powerful than a dream
You are what you seem
The goal has been to be less hard on myself. More faith in the small things, like my ability to drink water every day. Go easy on the guilt. Stop using anger like an anchor. Rise out of my resentment like the steam on my morning coffee. Trust my gut. Lean into hope like I’m hard wired to shine. Even belief need some kind a battery, a circuitry of possibilities. Grace isn’t just what we say before a meal is served. Think of it as a song. I’m trying to remember the words. I need to be kinder to myself. Some days are harder than others. That is the hardest part. Are there dark parts to your mind?/ Hidden secrets left behind?/ where no one ever goes / But everybody knows? / It’s all right.
Written for the 51st Anniversary of the Apollo 13 Mission
On the radio,
I hear the voice of a man
who was meant to land on the Moon
but never did.
It is the 51st anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission
Commander Jim Lovell speaks
with both his feet on the Earth
He remembers the sound of an explosion
though he didn’t know, nor did the crew,
that an oxygen tank just blew
after igniting in the middle of space
Over 200,000 miles from home.
If there was ever a reason to scream
into the black void of space-time-eternity,
this was surely it.
Everything went wrong at the right time.
Yet what struck me like a shooting star
was not the immediate sense of doom
but instead what
Commander Lovell said
That he had to stay positive
if he wanted to survive
Positivity is what makes a team work
200,000 miles away from home
3 men lost the moon
lost water, lost light
lost all supplies of life
A miracle didn’t save them
Teamwork did
positivity
became the gravity
and isn’t staying positive
another form of faith?
I didn’t know this before
but I now I do
NASA named the Apollo 13 spacecraft
Odyssey
An epic poem
about one man’s faith
in returning home.
A POEM A DAY 