Mockingbird

The crow settles out of the grey-clouded sky
that frames a peaked shingled roof, its brick chimney capped with tile.
Wings beat a gentle twice, slowing, then lifting
so the feet spread a toe's width above the roof peak,
then settle as if there were no flight
the crow stands, and with a shudder shakes the muscles out
then scouts the street and neighbors with quick, full-headed glances all around.

Across the street a mockingbird sits atop the tile atop its chimney
cheater cheater churning turning into female-stopping
sweet jagged rhythms and piercing cluster chords that may even impress a crow
and certainly humiliate a poet trying awfully hard to learn his secret.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (Working)

Venus came to me poised on a shell emerging from the ocean, her eyes on mine, defining my definition of ultimate beauty.

An invitation and a need to bring our sense of self to each alone had brought us to a promise of enlightenment from Buddha

Parabolic Curves

How I love telephone poles and wires in the fall. The mellowing browns and blacks are extraordinary. The looping, parabolic curves bring me to my knees. The cross bars, insulators, joint-boxes and transformers -- all natural -- share my rapt attention. I barely see the no parking signs and streets of asphalt and cement. Somehow they represent life eternal while the trees and flowers discolor, die and fall behind them, barely noticed.

Lillian

In memory my home is not home without Lillian.

A Vision

We lie naked face to face in semidarkness,
your body's profile an exquisite, timeless curve ...

We touch, explore each other gently, somehow not erotic,
looking, seeing, exposing to each other
a wonder that is eternal, yes, erotic, yes, ours alone.

I don't know

Once I asked a new friend, "How old are you?"
She answered appropriately, "I don't know."

At a 50th anniversary reunion,
I fell in love with a bunch of old people
with whom I had fallen in love many times before,
each time a wonder, each time anew,
each one unique, each a surprise,
each one so deep I never knew.
I'm astonished, in awe, in a stew:
how can I love, how renew,
how can I thank, how can I be in love so much
with you and you and you?
Brothers and sisters, lovers and friends,
I love you ... it never ends.

Mom

And now wacky am I, I thank you, mother, for 

the days I take no pill;

the oak table that folds upon itself,

a hinge, a turn, a hidden box 

containing nothing, a silence left to me alone;

the vaporous song echoing here from the 

dusty floor of a small house

in a village like so many.

I thank you that I somehow sing 

though rhythmns and their verses 

keep note and meaning but to me, 

through the doubt that song to my self 

in silence be song at all.