last lover

My last lover
Dances through the dying forest like a butterfly
living its first and last day
He dances through the dying leaves on the forest floor
The rotting branches
dance in the wind

A silence
at a distance
The tea leaves blow off the counter
The walls of the house have collapsed
wind singing through them
The curtains, the only thing left.
Blowing in tatters in the wind

In a pure grey sky,
the birds have stopped singing
The ice flows through the open floors
The blue moon melts overhead


As my last lover dances away
Disappearing into the fog
Like the ghost fox that follows him

fog

The red birds flock on branches, five or ten, and are scattered here and there.
A few in the bamboo, a few in the barren oak trees.

While the cat, as still as an ice cat sits with her paws melting the snow in little prints on the concrete steps and looking out to the woods.

There in the grey sky a hint of a spring to come.
The leaves of faint beige, of pale yellow, peek from the snow, melted into a bitter crust, under an off white grey sky.

Fog rolling up the hill, fills the sky, and meets the snow, and encloses the cat & me in soft white damp.

storm

From my kitchen, I can see the faint glimmers of the rising sun through the bare tree branches of the forest behind my house. To my right is my snow covered driveway, strewn with a few broken branches. The bamboo is frozen in a pile of snow. Red cardinals fly in and out chased by small chickadees. No ghostly fox has appeared.

The calm after the storm rent by snow blowers, clanging snow plows, and the scraping of shovels. The road is a slush strewn mess of dirt, ice, snow, which has been churned up by the trucks and cars. No one is sledding or playing today; everyone is rushing off to the store and work. Everyone is preparing for a holiday, forgetting the signature left by Mother Nature.

Only I am home watching the sun hit the icicles on my deck, the water dripping slowly out the drainpipe, flooding my driveway in a careless pattern.

parade of brides

She watches the parade of brides down the street
Where did they arrive from ….
This series of brides; tall and short
in white wedding dresses
that sweep the street clean
Their trains drifting down the street catching
on lampposts
on parking meters
One caught in the fender of
A faded red '68 mustang
rips loose
and the fabric flutters
the train, loose,
Dances around the legs of children
And husky dogs
That also prance down the street

the Whirlwind

In the whirlwind

Ghostly foxes running through the pine forest
stepping over the leaves
One two feet jumping through the piles of leaves


Ghostly foxes
Jumping through golden rusty leaves
The foxes dance
Tails floating behind
Feet leaping
through
piles of yellowed willow leaves

A ghostly fox standing under the bamboo stand
Leaning gently on the icy silt
The icy snow

When the bamboo breaks under the snow
The fox taps lightly down the hill white flakes dancing from its coat

Breathing

Like the sound of petals rustling
Or a bird flying through bamboo
We might vanish through the clouds
and never be seen again

Such things I see through your eyes
that lock in mine
Inside me
No words needed
In this silence,
This silence of our bittersweet passion

Hearts beating together
Feeling your breath against my fingers
In my ears
Against my neck
Breathing in that breath
And breathing it back to you

It echoes in my heart
Every day
Every minute
Your breath
So still as that bird in the frozen bamboo