Let my blood course
 through his heart
my marrow fortify
 his flesh
my bones fashion the glint
 in his fangs

I’ve loved the pattering of your feet
 little one
You’ve so delighted me
 I fostered this atmosphere
You say I bring you down; I’m clingy
 enough of your cackling
You without me?
 I won’t hear it
Who gave you the strength to strut
 gives you wings to sing

When poets have nothing to say
 they are silent graves
Should rays delight their gaze
 chirp, chirp, chirp
In accordance with that
 natural cadence
the stars’ entirety
 and dawn’s bloom

I fashion myself
 a hollow reed
Oh, wind
 cavort with me
Upbraid me
 in melody

The pink siren–call of sunset
 beckons me across the lake
clouds mountains of awe
 engulfed in reflection
I embrace
I embrace; I cannot otherwise
Mystic visions
 once stood before my eyes
 and my so–called freewill
 averted my gaze
Now, humbled and tamed
 I no longer flinch in majesty’s presence
Oh, dogs, can’t you see?
 Am I alone bound to suffer witness?

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