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 voice comes and goes
A thought flows then no-shows
A word stays but the idea frays
A poem is everywhere then nowhere
A cloud crosses the sky like a line in a page
A shape of sound surrounds the day
A song is a quiet kind of chaos
A moment is a door into something more
A door opens only to close
A voice comes and goes
A thought flows then no-shows
A poem is everywhere then nowhere
Across the stars and lights of the flamingo pink walls
of Taco Cabana off of 45 South and Wayside
and
under the waves of headlights surrounding us inside
this fast-food parking lot on a Saturday Night,
Adela turns to me from the passenger seat
And proclaims her life-long belief in soul mates
In the idea that two people are meant to be.
Without missing a beat,
she looks right at me and smiles a mile long
and confirms that I am indeed her soul mate.
As her husband, I feel relieved,
So relieved I could sing!
And I do,
all the way home.
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.
Try not to panic when you hear the word pandemic
Or at least, try not to think of panic.
The connotation of that word
like an incantation I cannot escape.
How much time has passed since the last
time you were afraid? I watched
the whole world spend a year in fear
and fighting to stay alive.
What will I say of this time?
This morning, I drove south
through a grey sky to take
my wife to her second vaccine
appointment. Listening to NPR,
we hear a story about gospel soul singer
Elizabeth King, who started singing again
after she survived a drunk driving car accident
She sang the songs her mother sang to her
songs left behind before her long journey home
back to God. The music of her voice
harmonized with the sound of morning rain.
Looking ahead, I listen with both
hands on the steering wheel,
the gold wedding band on my finger
shines brighter than the sun.
I’m in love with right now
with nothing left to fear.
David Lynch said
Fix your hearts or die.
In a dream of mine,
I am reminded just how human I am
the second I wake up and am no longer
flawless or fearless.
The business of living goes on.
The sky leaves a legacy of light
painted across day and night.
Sitting on the front porch,
I close my eyes and listen to
the wind in the trees.
Broken isn’t a word I’d use to describe me.
If I break, I’m breaking like daylight
and good news.
A POEM A DAY 