Forest Time

This place of moss and mist
where dark loam feeds and liquid air drips
and giants kiss eternity -
this place stops time.

Inside this world of earth-born movement
even the air gestates.
Life exhales and slakes,
creeps and burrows,
leaps and scurries,
climbs and flutters,
nourishes, suckles,
spinning a spiraling web
of reincarnation and revelation.

As I breathe these whispers, wise and evergreen,
I come to believe heaven is covered in moss.

Crayfish Time

Photo by Peyman Zehtab

Crayfish time lingers and bides
In its underwater world
Crawling and drifting through ancient molecules,
Wary and defensive, its weapons poised.
Inside this tiny crustacean’s armor
Beats the heart of a dinosaur,
Primal survival lurking beneath
The cool, calm surface.
A callous cannibal. A secret, solitary scavenger.
Death’s cousin.

I swoop in to snatch it up
In a heady delusion of mortal power.

Hummingbird Time

Hummingbird time zips and hovers with
Millisecond shutter speeds
Darting between atoms and moments
While my now stands still.
Rest is movement,
A blink is loss,
And energy the magic that drives the world.

I pass patient hours
Hoping for its fleeting kiss of beauty.

Life Is too Short

That's life,
My father, who is
naturally too
Irish, said. It's short.

Life, said my mother
is more than enough.
Too many people come up
short just by giving in.

In this life
our task is
to eat-drink-love-laugh too
much so we don't come up short.

Life pushes you. It
is a party guest with
too much to eat and drink
short-changing the waiters.

BUT

Life is too short to
  crush hard-boiled eggs
  count gray hairs and lost loves
  eat boiled potatoes without butter
  spend your last nickel on toothpaste
  grind your teeth at 3 am
  lick cupcake frosting alone
  squelch a red-headed spirit
  iron a funeral shirt
  chase after unresolved chords
  deny yourself peppermint sticks
  lasso empty promises
  explode airy castles
  flood your soul's doorways
  choke on inconstant love
  serenade a fickle mailman
  say nothing to the boy with dimples.

Short, too, as life, is
  Christmas morning
  the savoring of an eclair
  the bloom of an iris
  the butterfly's sojourn
  the chance to be heard
  the leaping gait that scales fences
  the twinkle in your blue eyes
  our days of courtship
  our nights of bliss

  the pause before the tsunami hits

  
 

Supply and Demand

My life is a failed economy
with lagging productivity
and an overabundance of scarcity.

The shelves in my stores are empty of
Time and Love
and Patience
and Wisdom
and Sanity -
and Me.
Me.
I
am in very
short
supply.

When demand outstrips supply,
the price
goes
up.

I can't afford myself anymore.

Rococo Souls

We have rococo souls:

brimming with crevices,
laden with whorls -
a carapace here
a curlicue there,
festooned with odd embellishments,
with sconces on our battlements,

in velvet gilded with fleur de lis -
no stoic spartan spirits we,
no simple hearts, no plain ascetics;
like troubadours, we're peripatetic.

We have rococo souls.

Portland Skies

1.

dove-feather clouds infused with sun
kiss my skin with mist
in this place of solace-scented rain
and flannel-soft skies laced in light
a thousand moss-drenched trees
signal life

2.
do not call this sky overcast
it's cast just right -
a watercolor masterpiece
a shade without compare
not the gray of ocean waves
or shadows or ash or death
not even the gray of a lover's eyes
this is a grey you long to touch
a depth without deception
glowing with the promise of divinity
knowing the sacrament of pain
and blessing it with hope