Your Next Life

I watch white apple
blossoms detach from pink child-
hood and blow here and

there. I feel nothing.
But then a car, windows down,
passes, and a song

I knew by heart blows
me away. Apple blossoms
glow in the distance.

Life is risk. Hang out
and a coincidence may
trigger your next life.

Tulips

Tulips flare in the
raw dank Spring evening, gold
closing for the night.

They border gardens
in this quaint New England place
where grief opens to

beauty. Erect, they
burn a hole in the darkness.
They awake to them-

selves, dawn on me as
it occurs to me the old
word ‘soul’ may fit here.

Music

It’s not memory
fills the silence as I sit
here pen suspended.

Squirrels chitter in
the rain-soaked blossoming trees.
The window open

for companionship.
Something has endowed the day
with its own music.

To the Mockingbird

May as well relax.
You will never name them all,
the birds whose songs blend

in such rare confu-
sion now that it’s Spring. Threshold
and horizon, be-

yond naming, music
of the soul if soul is both
empty and full. I

think the mockingbird
is the one for me. It does
each bird and then some.

Easter Eve 2019

Window open to
the night heavy with showers
and carillon bells.

Raise a wee dram
of Glenmorangie as folk
spill from Easter Mass

into the damp dark.
Our bed is empty, dear one,
why do I hold you?

Earth smells great tonight.
Earth is great. The BBC
supplies the bad news:

Terror in Sri Lan-
ka. Water has no shape, is
the source of all good,

plenipotency
and pluripotency, be-
ing’s porosity.

Tawney

Holy Saturday!
God is dead and busy with
the dead. On the porch

of my girlfriend’s house,
her old cat sprawls in the sun.
She prefers him to

me. He sleeps between
her breasts, he kneads her belly,
this paw now that. I

am filled with desire.
Empty-headed that I am,
I watch him cool down.

Good Friday Song

Snowdrops linger un-
der roadside Forsythia
as days grow warmer.

There’s something out
beyond all this beauty hold-
ing it together

for the moment. Call
it Good Friday. I’m in love
with Love for today.

NB Stanza 2 is largely cribbed from Desmond, The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being, 132.