Morning Meditation

The twilight of the day
sifts through the night
like sugar powdered
for sweetness.

The mind lifts
a finger, wets it on the tongue
of awareness, and dips the senses
into the fine confection
to return to the mouth
a sample
and the comfort
of a new day.

Awake
and searching the edges
of the room for familiar forms,
the only promise of peace
is to rise at the call,
sit upright
and ask thought
to quiet into the breath
and the companionship
of silence
to greet the rush of my humanity
with controlled consciousness
and the release of everything dark.

Caged Bird

Exhaust the ways
escape is possible
and the panic
of no way out
will make the prisoner
weep, break down
call for his mother
who was also captive
before she died alone
and begging for a glimpse
of the sky.

Turn the bars
into the stems
of daisies.

Turn the guard
into friend.

Turn the heart
into unending singer
like the bird
who loves
her cage.

Heat

The heat of the night
rolls through the body
like fire on the edge
of new fuel rapidly approaching
spring on the prairie.

There is no stopping the wave
that must consume the past
in order to make way
for the violent green
that sleeps under the surface
of earth.

You have no idea
of the giant that wakes
from winter,
the glacial cracks booming
in the bones
of unconditional love.

The air ignites
with crimson
at dawn.
The first drops of water, bloody,
sizzle then evaporate
into mist.

New Year for a Writer

Write.
Just write and see what comes from that place
in the middle. That place where
the heart channels the soul to the universe
for examination.

Greet the day with words
on the page
where ink opens you
on the white paper and allows blood
to drip as pure joy into a space
where the clear mind is free
to make love to the curves of a syllable
and the frustration of punctuation
leaves on a moan--
of nothing.

Plunge deeply into the idea of love
with no concern for time
or the obligation to the world.
Here words play on the skin,
run fingers delicately across
the slippery sex of the finer points of argument
and bring chills to the curve of the back
before release.

The breath will not be lost here,
but captured in the arms of reason
and then rejected
like a rigid boundary
that must be crossed
to experience air in the lungs
or dreaming of the color
of the inside of truth.

I wake to the sound of my pen scratching
across the flesh of this page
and laugh at the whispering
no one will hear
but this lover.

This beautiful face greets me
with unconditional abandon
asking only to please my every desire
to live fully present to the sea
and the sun
and the smell of the earth opening in spring
for the seeds that will become a feast
and nourish the hungry soul
that lives lean in the depths of more words
than will ever escape from the ribs
and blossom, exhaled, from hope.

The light of the day
arrives again
and the pages
filled with morning
roll over and make room
for the business of the day.