Inspired by the passing seasons, I am always scribbling notes and poems of observation.  These are my most recent creations, inspired by winter, 2001, capturing a mindset, I hope, that there is always more than meets the eye in what we see.  If you would like to read more, my chapbooks are available by emailing me at:

Poetry Chapbooks

WHY SHE CLOSES THE WINDOW

Through her winter window
the bone-branches of the
chaparral sway
She is cold where January
has entered her skin
Sometimes blue flowers are delivered
by the wind
wind that has recently visited a thousand graves
wind that has keened through Pan's pipes
wind that comes from an old dead star

Her love opens windows during storms
She closes them
though her affection for rain
could fill seas
She is the hibernator
She makes quilt cocoons in her sleep
Her nightmares are bewitchingly
dangerous, wood-scented

There are two kinds of people in the world
wandering settlers
and settled wanderers
She closes the window because
she has journeyed to the far edge
of time
and now she must sleep
because the next move
will come in a dream

I LIVE ON THE EDGE

I live on the edge of a field
where coyotes are born
and moonlight turns the
land white as fog
on nights when the rest
of the world
disappears.

WINTER FREEZES TIME

Sitting in a sphere of light
the thick bedcovers
folded back
and the many-voiced wind
so strong
it howls
winter in an old mining town
in the desert
I can hear the years folding back
smell the smoke of centuries-old
hearth fires
Winter freezes time
It is a white locked gate
holding back
minutes hours decades
births and deaths
There will be no new graves
in this moment
no new life
Stars smother
Earth becomes the Moon
Lost souls rise from 
icy rocks
looking like children
in a haunted dance
When they sing
worlds crack
Dreamless depths call for substance
Shadows come out of themselves
wholly formed
Winter creates a circle
inside the year
where all this is remembered

THE REASON WINTER LASTS

Goblin trees
running past the moon's 
splintered beams
Haunted winter nights
wearing formal skies
The winds ponder
and riddle
The reason winter last so long?
Hades will not be rushed
in the court of love

POEM WRITTEN ON A FROZEN EVENING

amber windows overlook
the autumn-cooling lands of my mind
dream-beings give me messages
that they are not dreams
these journeys into candle-fed realms
these dusk-fueled visions

Come in through my shutter
and let me haunt you
you who are the demon who will kill me
and make me a better person
Let my blood ghost through
your veins
and tell you goblin stories
from under the bed
I will show you the witches
who hide in my closets
the winds who turn my
clothes to string
the northern gods who live
in the green glow of winter stars
and visit me in trance

I shelter storms
catch snow in globes
Let me tell you of my altar
It is a poem written
on a frozen evening
after the sleepwalkers have all
faded away
about a phantom that paces
to my pulse
in front of my January door

The sky misses the moon tonight
Shadows come out to feed the dark
I know one of them is you
and the other me

WAITING FOR NO ONE

The day evolves
from a cold dead stone called January
I sit in fissures
of silver light
wrapped in blankets and jackets
where Raggedy Ann and the vampire
share my couch
under a solid granite sky
snowflake air
I am the dreaming frost queen
living in a crystal country
pies cooling on the counter
fogging the glass walls
In this white landscape
of feathered floating apparitions
apple-scented fey
the room is purified by steam
and the goblet fills itself
with pale blue wine
to remind me of
my lost king
my double
my wasted afternoons
married to that grief
I am the ghost of a thousand women
who waited for love to complete them
and ended their lives behind curtains
of heavy velvet dust
Rose-covered coffins
are where I keep those
dangerous legends of death
No one can kill me
I savor each breath
even in ice-hell
my stone uncarved
no epitaph or plastic vines
in the mist-clearing
of this moonless realm
where sometimes I see
his cloaked silhouette
the sound of hooves
the scent of rain
Uncharmed, he vanishes
while I continue to tend my home
waiting for no one
on this sculptured star
north of the wind
and sun
and sight

SLEEP-FLYING

Winter deepens the coyote's howl
Clouds fit themselves into puzzles
4 a.m. moonrise
and she casts no shadow
as she slowly rises from herself
floating along silent brown rooftops
glimpsing her white reflection in
frozen pools
wingless brunette nude
contradictory demi-Venus
sleep-flying like some
demented witch
Any night like this is her Sabbath
the drastic hours of frozen dew
and distant trains bringing more darkness
on their backs, more cold steel drifts
of wind-shaped mist
Where does she go?
To find her true self
behind the wicks of winter stars
behind the door into dusk
before Earth was born

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Revised: January 02, 2013

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