Heavy

Gray--a cloud. Gray as cloud
perched, pivotal, on horizon's bow
to blanket the world, shielding sleepers
in  rain-wrecked, shade-formed shroud.

Endings

Silence, as the burned bush fallen to cinders;
I lie beneath it, counting branches turned to ash.
Where leaves once grew, now I know emptiness
like the gaping maw between leaves.

And I must write lines between lines
to seek what must be said--that the heart of the creator
is wallowing. No motion, no seed, no way to plant
a garden without flames to precede
the brush, the moss, the trees.

Do I ask some other muse to speak?
Like the dormant roots of a weed, I need
something to ignite, to fuel, to know
I am not done growing.

Change, the pain of rebirth
was once aflame, now dimmed. Mere crackling,
I have no more destruction to seek, but this fire-stripped forest
has turned lifeless for me.

Stems

And they don't know that mentioning them
is always an insult to me.

Shall I wear my loss as a badge
on my sleeve; tell them
how it grieves me, how I wish
they could see

the fragility: frost-weeds
easily snapped at the stem, easily seeded
and grown again, not so easily freed.

On watching Shakespeare

Watching them act, there are a thousand ways
and a thousand words to explain the heart;
watching them be, become, be undone
by scenes at the end
of that marvelous play;

play on words, play on minds, play on
me, sweet waves of visions through windows
enraptured by faces. I know all of you
better than the play knows itself--

for these are the words of a spirit entranced, who never dared dance;
the road of one who shies when they walk,
who yearns when they talk, who leaks, who becomes only
what has already been made.

I want to know, where in this life do I fit
like a piece, when so many pieces have fractured. We
reach across the stage and bright lights to
another, breathing, playing, acting
the part: living the dream, dying the death.

Death, teach me what it means
to dream. What it means
to lose hope, like white roses
falling to the ground.
Show me a road forward, a root
to a tree, a tree,
now fallen, now split at the trunk, now broken.

Plant seeds at my feet
that I might walk forward, crushing
the roots I have made;
show me rivulets of water, show me
rain run-offs, deep rising cliffs, mountains
born of mist and fog, crowned by winter,
here risen from the ground.

You flow through spring in a vibrant undertow;
threading forward, you teach me of roots,
of abandon, of endless yearning; you know
what the heart needs, and I, afraid to say it, afraid
to move forward; here is dusk
and I stand alone. Moving forward--
why? Why must I leave all I ever loved
behind.