Custody

Dead fills this house when you are not in it
Your kisses do not cover me like sighs
Your ridiculousness does not fill my frightened crevices
Your silly, tired head does not collide with my cheekbone
God holds her breath, sucking a vacuum of my house
And I sleep with unquiet spirits
Awaiting like holy water
Your Saturday return

Potter's Wheel

There are three things you can count on:
sun, shadow, and the play among them
It is all the fall of light and imagination.
It is not light and dark, but light and story.
The story-teller always with the cool, wet clay spinning in her hands.
The war, then, is for the potter’s wheel.
The fight is voice.
Who will tell the story?
The lips of the story teller whisper light and cast shadows.

I dress you in white and adorn you with rhyme
My silver whisper seeks your darkest places, and occupies.
I am trespasser, gold-clad and innocent.
I hold you forever in the light of my memory and in the dark of my nights.
The humiliation, I cast to shadow-wolves, forgotten.
(My love, most merciful and senseless)
I remember you as you never were and as you always will be.
I allow the scent of snapshots of you to fill the room
(even as I bar the rough hands of real visitors).
I raise myth, life-sized, to your countenance, trapped in tenderness.
You will always be the child within you.

I am at the potter’s wheel.

I Could Tip You

I could tip you
ever so slightly
My view of your
gaze turned to catch
a new light.

The first time I
snorkeled, I could hardly
believe the universe
under the ocean.

The textures of our love
your scents
and depths
beautiful as each Hawaii fish

All the years
patient as a universe
and all I had to do
was tip you to new light

Sacred Pause

Sacred Pause

I don’t check my email three times a day now
I read poetry.
I ingest it like food, three times a day.

I don’t chart my son’s education now
I take inspiration in him. I settle my soul upon him
like a Monarch

The pause, our armor against worry and haste