There I was
 a homeless man on a trek
 to the pizza shop
 my only care in the world
 waiting at the intersection
You pulled up
 passenger in a pickup truck
 in your beauty
 and your bright, blue eyes
Am I worthy enough for a smile?
 and you gave me a smile
 and though it was the day after Thanksgiving
 it suddenly felt like Christmas
 and the snow seemed to be
 blowing around
 touching my nose and eyelashes
 and I could see you in a bonnet
 with the wind rushing through your skirts
We must have been lovers once
 some kinda sisterly lovers
 warm underneath the blankets in our childhood
 but for you, your bed is the bed of a redneck
And I’ll never understand you
And yet you belong on that prairie
 with the unforgiving North Dakota winds
 foreboding a hard winter
And I’ll never understand you
 with your hard, closed–minded man
 who don’t understand you
 You, wearing your red, fading handkerchief
  whose red never fades
You, some kinda Josephine
 kidnapped from an aristocrat’s ball
 taken to some backwoods, backwards boonies
 where you are the only thing
 between hard–living and beauty
And I’ll never understand you
 though I’m the only one who’d care to

Wild intuition
 foolishly sacrificing
flesh and blood
 for heart,
cow for beans;
 what will become of your progeny?

Sometimes
 an entire world must shatter
to be embraced
 by a wider, more real,
 more intimate one

Look past the
 busy anxiety
           &
 callous calamity
See the golden earth
 continually gifting
  itself to thee

Bereft,
take heart
for an audience with God
you are prepared

Barefoot to the picnic, I
 consume the hillside
 and sheltering sky
leaving notes
for you to brush aside
 and behold the landscape
 whereon you reside

We are the living questions
 we need only ask

The world
         life
    such a heavy gift
may I bear it all
 not groan under it
       oh
   perhaps
     I am wrong–way ’round
and planting feet
 find solid ground

Darling, don’t fade.
From your curly locks,
I reconstruct the mountain airs
 and the earthen landscape;
from your starry eyes,
 the heavens and the
  vast universe.