The river drops
from one plateau
to another.
It does so
with a minimum
of noise.
It spreads its
fingers of glass
into the meadow,
and chuckles its
turbulence
into containers of grass,
doubling back on itself
in a frothy overlay
that glides into ripples
and loosens
reflections of clouds
from their moorings.

Our own depths suggest
that winds of change
and rainwater knives
shape our directions
and carve out the sounds
of our passage
with as little fanfare
as the jeweled dust
that floats up
from the riverbed.

Hands of sunlight
touch the farthest shores
of our existence,
changing our reflections
as we double back
upon ourselves,
realizing
who we have been,
and who we are becoming—
all expressions
of our inexhaustible
confluence.

 

Call me. Call my name.
There, in the singing wood
a flock of wild birds
levitates.

Whose faces are these,
foreign and familiar?
The future contains them,
but they are the past,
when we don't know
what we are really seeking.
Even rainbows are doorways
that we enter unknowing.

Sometimes,
there is a certain "wild" within us.
Denied our truths,
we follow maps in our blood.
Then, kissed by ice
and bitten by snow,
we know that we have fallen
very near
our camp.

No words at all.
A constant rhythmic
grinding of teeth,
like a wooden cradle's creaking.

Hardly tall enough
to clear the keyboard
she stands
at the piano
tethering the notes
to her fingers,
purple flowers
that upon release
dissolve into air.
Our efforts
to communicate
are tenuous at best:
broken drum beats;
a hollow oar
in the water;
a stoppage of rain.

Suddenly,
at the corner
of averted eyes,
(no sound of crying)
tears big as bluebirds,
big as Alaska
slide soundlessly
downward

and
with her hands
she raises
the tinkling fragile-ice
flowers
of her thoughts
into air,
and with a gesture
holds them out to me,
like an echo.
Or an offering.