In Search of Wings

I looked for a teacher, but
  found only locust shells
    clinging to oak bark.

Brittle and empty,
  their one remaining hope
    was to be left alone.

The tree grows high, they said.
  This is the way to heaven.
    I put them in a coffee can

With a tight lid, and
  went deeper into the woods
    in search of wings.

Sweet Eternity

Tomatoes
hang like Chinese lanterns,
but heavy, straining
to spill a different light.

Tomatoes,
my labor of love
and also, don't kid yourself,
of dirt and sweat and
muscles feeling their years,
the exquisite breathy push
of life.

This tomato
I picked this morning, now
sliced and salted beside
mozzarella and basil,
a starburst of olive oil
glinting with distant heat.

A crescendo
of wellness and love.

But wait!
Rush and you'll miss the best part--
this glimpse of eternity in a
thousand earthen seeds, a
glance in the mirror
of all that is possible-
unstoppable!-
now.

The heart
sways like Chinese lanterns,
moved by
the Beloved's touch,
now heavy, straining
to spill a different light.

City of Poets

There is no cure
  for the melancholy
    of owl song at sunset.

What power could make
  the exiled man quit
    his longing for the

house of his hands, for
  the scent of apple wood
    on the sinking autumn air,

for the cold kisses 
  of children as night
    drives them indoors?

There is a song,
  a taste, a woman's
    face that calls me home

through the misted forest,
  across the pebbled shore
    to the City of Poets.

Dreams Float

The house my father built was poor shelter.

The walls had holes that, after dark,

became doorways for the nesting night creatures

that gathered under my pillow and in

My pants pockets and between the pages

on my desk. They snuffled and rustled and

murmured endlessly about fault and failure

and dreams that end up surrounded by

Rotting timber at the bottom of the ocean.

But I know something my father forgot:

Dreams float, and they rot far more easily

in taverns on shore than in the salty 

Freshness of freedom.