And He Said. . .

"How do you write them so quickly?"

I stop.
Near the place where
my heart has admired
the view of happiness
and pick these poems
from the field of wild daisies
that grow at the bottom
of my soul.

What Can You Say About a Shoulder?

I've closed the shades
so the neighbors can't see
the way I move
and stretch these days
to open the heart
to a universe longing
for the promise of love.

We all sit on our porches
on hot summer days
fanning flies and the heat
from our faces
remembering a time of youth
where we dripped with the sweat
of our lover and could drink
each drop with our lips
parched with a bottomless hunger
for one more kiss,
one more caress of a shoulder
or the hand brushing the field
of love that surrounds each of us
with so much light.

But what can you say about a shoulder tonight
alone tuning herself with the spinning
top of the universe –
one collar bone connected to the fleshy
white arm of a woman
waiting to understand
the meaning of the rumbling
of the stars in her chest.

Would you embrace her
in the cold of winter,
warm her enough to stop
the constant humming in her head
long enough to hear herself think
from the center of everything
she is coming to know.

All that peace might be possible
if you could sing a song to this corner
of the bony cage near this beaten
heart and learn to wait on the edge of alone
while holding the cool repose
of a shrug or the shaking
ease of laughter
caught at a moment
of forgetting.

Mapping The Mind of a Lover

Turn left at desire
near the corner where beauty used to live
and you will find your way
to her dooryard.
The flowers and fragrant herbs
are abundant here
and a great distraction
to anyone who has ever been denied
a kiss or the embrace of a reluctant suitor.
Who wouldn’t grieve this loss
when daisies burst white,
exploding with scentless centers,
ambushing the hope of summer
with a longing for pure adoration?

She is often lost,
even in her home town,
with the directions written,
exact distances delineated
and landmarks, like smiles and laughter,
noted clearly in bold print.

The truth is
she’d rather use her instincts
when it comes to traveling to most places.
The heart has failed to offer her fog-free visibility
so many times and yet the thrill of the ride
pushed her around the curves of disappointment
and anxiety more often than not.
Injury and accidental detours have all been unexpected
delays she was prepared to endure.
The wrecker is, after all, just around the bend
of the boundary of the next handsome hamlet
or county line of a breathless soul mate.

Patience is the only virtue necessary for a successful traveler
to find her way past the potholes and frost heaves of a lonely winter.
Go slowly, notice the horizon and the glory of a sunrise
and she is certain this snail-speed will surely open her honestly
to a conversation at the local diner or village store
with a man named Forgiveness
about the color of ignorance.

At the end of that day
she’ll make her way back home
where she can peel the layers of sweat
and clinging dirt of the road from her skin
with the showers of insight,
falling like stars on her face and bare breasts,
coolly left in the path
of a passing comet
on this highway
to nowhere.