The Relief I Feel

These first breaths of purity of thought hold me before the day
with only the sounds of bird song
and the tapping of rain on a single layer
of cedar shingles.

These inhalations, still calm before the ritual of coffee
and malfeasance of the mind's controlling power,
are not polluted with high brambles, sharp blades of grasses,
or pointed tips of thistled wanting.

How will I explain to my sons
this dedication to darkest revenge
and the vendetta against the patriarchs suddenly abandoned--
all the other golden images we once worshipped, simply gone?

Now that the statues have been melted in truth's kiln
with common metals for their strength,
the beautiful opulence is gone.

The relief I feel is overwhelming.

I am completely peaceful in this garden where nothing grows

except the single lotus from the clouded and muddy pool
slowly collecting the warm tears of gratitude

of letting go.

Words Like Flowing Wine

In a perfect world
the pendulum of the grapevine
would stop swinging
and find a still point
in the center of fear and love.

The rumors that trickle into the chasm of truth
are few and far between where love has sidled up
to the heart and ignores the temptation to glamorize

fear and the ignorant path
that burrows below the surface of the skin
and turns the leaves into dry and curling words
that only harm us with the scorching dishonesty
that cannot be washed clean.

Stand tall and find your center of gravity
and the words will flow smoothly from the tongue
like water on the petals overflowing kindness.

Snow Storm in April

In tribute to a mild winter
we allow joy to follow our amazement
as a miniature snow storm hits Vermont
this early April.

The winds walloped us last night
as we sunk into the pillows,
anticipated the worst,
and dutifully bought bread and milk,
gassed up the cars,
and waited for the renegade precipitation
to forget her manners
and enter the party uninvited.

No one paid for this lopsided exchange
where spring and summer edged us closer to hope
only to be taken in by cancellations
clumsy with ungainly excuses
to the flowers that dared to collect the sun and color
like the blush on a girl's face after her first dance.

The night is hushed now and we forgive everything
knowing it is all a temporary, youthful hoax-
a whistle at the door
reminding us to all come home early.

Walking to Work

It is impossible to ignore the shimmer of spring
as the cumbersome layers of dark days fall away,
fracturing the illusion of all that I have left behind.

Each new day is vacant of the painful assaults
and bruises of expectation,
that plundered joy and the logic of abundant love.

Let the brusque wind and blithe April showers
divide my heart from the mind that saddled me
with heavy thoughts of the unkindness of the world.

It is the Beloved that has arrived
in the yellow cup of the daffodil
and the delicate edges of the short passion
of each purple crocus
along this gentle path
walking to the work I must do.

Knowing When It is Time to Go

The divestment from this miserly and unfaithful master
is threaded from a spool spun with potent, black misery.

Vanity loves another kind of company
and all I can do is run from the poison
and too many pockmarked promises.

I forget myself on a vagabond errand
toward joy that cannot be measured by money
or human desire. Time and love are all that matter.

Time and love are all that I have been given.

I am chalky with gratitude
and evening dusts me with salty simplicity
like I know at the end of a sunny soak
in the belly of the ocean.
In this moment only
I am breathing air saturated with brine
and God's constant laughter--

knowing so clearly when
it is time to go.

Welding With Jonah

When I spend the weekend welding with my son,
who has entered into his beautiful teenaged amperage,
we weld with evolutionary electrodes, fire and fuel
fusing our bonds,
pushing the molten lines of metallic love
into the spaces between the strongest of steel.

The slag and flux of life has no magnetic power
in this heat that still burns brightly in the forge
of the life that brings us together.

Sparks fly like comets all around us,
landing randomly in the noise of a shop of strangers.

My grandfather's Norwegian shadow
coils like smoke around our heads, laughing.
There's no joy like watching the shining seam
hold tight as the quenching solution steams.

The Tasks Left Undone

Perhaps we've all forgotten,
one time or another,

how hard it is
to do anything alone.

Each meddlesome task
a metallic taste
like a pending headache
that leaves each of us indecently vulnerable
to losing time.

This mottled mess
of what is left undone
is what brings me to my knees,
helpless watching all hope
wash out to sea.