Traveling Companion

4/2/2025

In the dark, in the dark–in the dark and cold–

Pines dripping, wind biting, and path untold–

A boy rides alone, and his sorrow seethes. 

But something unseen at his side, it breathes;

Warm and deep and slow and wild.

A voice in the shadows comes, rich and mild.

It had waited long for him to speak,

Holding all answers he could seek.

If he wanted Truth, he had only to ask.

What lies behind his every task?

Whose are his sorrows, and whose his hope?

Who sheltered him there at the end of his rope,

That night in the tombs when ghouls he feared?

Who brought him in safely when death he neared

As a wailing child at the edge of the sea?

What lurks past his every memory?

In the dark, in the dark, triune voices call,

Echoing forth from a singular footfall,

And the fog's shroud is fading into white,

Caught up in a marvelous light.

Memoir

4/3/2025

We are both works in progress,

Still seeking out our egress

From exoskeletal childhoods 

Grown too tight around our wings.

We shine spotlights on shouldn'ts and shoulds,

From depths of cringe and despair

To the highs where we can find hope sings.

We're strangers but we're quite a pair,

Mining memories for our goods.

Been having feelings about the difference in treatment of Talking Animals between Narnia and another book I've been reading.

4/6/2025

There's no Great Lion here –

just absent gods and fairies.

The founding myths all disagree

On how the Beasts gained thought.

Did that make it simpler

To ignore what they were saying?

To call them simple chattel,

Or worse, livestock, not your citizens?

A nation's Harfang appetites

Make Narnia seem a paradise.

4/6/2025

I don't know why we can't see eye to eye.

It never works. You never understand.

But still I feel compelled that I must try.

If you'd look up, I'm offering my hand. 

Perhaps we're caught in bubbles of our own.

We see right through our walls, but still can't reach.

I'm a child no more. I am full grown.

Still you need to lecture and to preach.

What if there's beauty in our difference?

What's yours is not less yours if mine is mine.

Neither of us needs an inference

That ours should be the one way blessed divine.

Agent Carter

4/7/2025

You are grace practiced into ease,

Stiff upper lip full of

Lipstick red as pride and need,

Lethal gentleness, genteel ferocity,

Synching your life into foreign soil.

It's impossible to camouflage your soul,

Still you travel in shadows.

You dance to hide, or to remember

Loves lost. Loves you keep right on losing.

Your name is seldom recognized,

Passed over as a pretty face

To mind the home base.

Only other shadow-dancing folk,

Dismissed by power, expect you coming.

You knife in the dark.

You network-building monument,

Known after life as the queen bee

Of a house full of honey mixed poison.

4/8/2025

Miss, you must mind the mystery 

When the ticktock tower gleams:

Huddling, hear your history,

Perception splitting at the seams.

Something feels a fishy farce.

You'll always watch for her over your shoulder,

But you don't know who else spins remorse

As you and your sorrow grow older.

They weave in and out of your story unseen,

The worst angels of your nature.

They wrap up your holiday gold and green

With a magic book's wavering signature.

You needn't believe in the Other World 

To dream of its towers and terrible sea.

You'll never know your whole life unfurled.

Miss, you must mind the mystery. 

Awakening

(Impressions of a friend's instrumental composition)

4/9/2025

You have offered me this:

A cheerful, half-familiar tune

Heard on the edge of sleep,

Dreams still murmuring breathily, 

Accompanied by 

Summer evening cicaeda-drone,

Peaceful memory.

Your string-strum fades

As night turns towards morning.

Night-owl Evening

4/10/2025

Ring me round with safety,

Brief island of light,

Before I set sail into 

The sea of night.

Cat paws are prowling,

Sister has turned in:

Outside the traffic's growling 

With the moon's Cheshire grin.

The world is all a shadow.

It's colors have been dulled.

Only the storybook's pages are bold.

So while me away, electric candle glow.

For now your quiet spell is all I know.

I called you “Mrs. Laughter” 

In a made-up tongue,

And you accepted the name.

My easygoing lady,

Laughing and giving laughter,

Playmate as much as leader.

You always made me welcome

As myself, not just another guest.

Your doors were often open

To a crowd–

Church, school, 

Friends of family. 

Your land rolls with memories.

Thanksgivings with praise raised

By your husband's deep voice,

Field day games in the dry grass field,

Potlucks overflowing goodness.

White elephant gifts by the pool table,

And a clay bird crafted for your smile.

My hanging back, awkward, 

From the rowdy joy of the summer pool,

Playing your grown-up games 

Or drawing on the sofas.

That house of joyful memories

Is all wrapped up in you.

Deacon's wife, youth camp counselor,

Constant presence in my teen years.

I tried to return to you, 

Laughter-maker, easy friend.

I met scattered talk, then silence.

Have we drifted too far?

What did you see to turn you away?

Motorcity 

4/16/2025

We trade the sun for neon,

Go deeper underground. 

The weather may be lacking 

But we're freedom bound.

Progress gleams bright and coldly

On the topside of the mound.

On the bridges we growl boldly. 

We would wish that clock unwound.

Red, white, blue are not the only colors,

Just the colors of the day.

Down among the pipes and wires

Life still finds a way.

Full of Rain

4/16/2025

The voice that strikes my heart

Like a sunbeam finding a vein of diamonds

Blesses me to be full of rain.

Full of growth, they say–

That's one way to cut the words;

Full of roots go down deep,

Flowers unfurl into drinking cups

And leaves weep for joy

Over and over, never minding 

The tears are the sky's not their own.

What else is the rain but the roots’ drink?

It's the churning of the mud,

Softened clay making new

The sun-scorched earth.

It's the windowpane singing sweet lullabies,

So long as you're safe inside–

The skin-soaked inconvenience,

Little lake regrowing in my driveway,

If we're out.

It's peace from summer heat,

But it's heavy blanket blocking sun

When sun is what we feel we need.

Water-cycle sings, brings forth 

Sweet water from a salty sea.

A blessing of life's complications.

Come rainbow, feed my heart

But take care not to drown the seed.

For the cats

4/17/2025

You slink and scamper into our hearths 

As if you'd always been there.

Not-quite-tamed, but self-domesticating;

Offering paws in easy partnership,

You come as

Tiny gods of Egypt, chasing rats, protecting grain;

Sailing-ships’ agile companions, luck in your presence;

Monasteries’ smallest brothers, meows not bound by vows of silence;

Fierce and feral rovers, plague upon the songbirds. 

You are domestic peace, snuggling soft, wrapped in sunbeams.

You are feisty claws, bushy tail, guard of territory. 

Short years, swift-footed, silken-furred and changeling-eyed,

Ever may you come and go, loving us across nine lives.

Chance meeting

4/17/2025

Glance my way, author:

Distant starlight fills pages,

Our sunshine at home.

In the media age

4/18/2025

Relax.

The world won't fly away

For your failing to perceive it,

Anxious hummingbird.

You needn't carry burdens

From a thousand miles away,

Just to pay

Rent on your brief life.

There is always something burning,

Someone learning of a need.

It's not all upon your shoulders.

There are a million others watching.

Please, be freed.