Seeing Others

The poppies and buckwheat bloom Little fires that have jumped the hearth Right out from the sun itself Scattering our world alight Illuminating our path And the dust we kick up Reminds us where we come from As it settles on our skin A mourning dew Of leftover ash Reminding us of where we’ll go Only in the presence of fire Do we truly see one another

I see you out walking Holding a mirror beneath your eyes So you can look downward into the skies One step at a time all the way home Careful not to go near the sun’s heat For fear of burning your tender feet Using cooler clouds for stepping stones   I see you out walking I see you flying your kite in the park I see you scribbling your notes in the dark I see...

I don’t know about you But it takes an act of my will To actually hear To truly listen to anyone I often can’t even hear my own voice in the mirror Nor the voice of those that I say that I love I get lost in my own thoughts And next thing I know Their lips are moving But I don’t know what they’re saying And often I’m only thinking Of what I want...

The room itself? There never was much light in there So when I tell you what happened I hope you’ll cut me some slack But as I stood in this room today That I had known so well for my entire life That chair in the corner The bed against the far wall How many times did I collapse on both? A heaping pile of angst Or bellowing laughter contagious like dust Never once noticing...

Curly white hair Glasses A smile that is kind Although sometimes slightly strained And that’s almost all I know of you So for the rest I’m going to wing it But I mean it From that place that exists Between us all And when I look at you from The doorway there It seems to me That your eyes have seen Enough broken promises For a lifetime I only see you in church We barely...

Humboldt County The house we call our own Her laughter now fills this home It defies logic and reason And all good doctrine It sets sharply against The crushing weight of debt And doubt It ripples down the hall Like waves that dance On an ocean that will drown you Without thinking twice   From the depths I think about thirty different things All at once I should have painted more often And maybe wrote...

You never really know Who they bring along What ghosts are riding shotgun Talking, talking, talking All the way to the beach And drowning out the song   But everybody here Knows that ghosts can’t swim Cold water to them is searing heat And anyway They can’t even stand A bit of sand on their feet   The ghosts just stay in the cars Angry at the stars And their children down here below Made...

Mary and Joseph They live down the street We ate donuts on strings Tied to their tree Last Halloween But Christmas Eve is for listening To country music on the local radio While waiting in a long line of cars With out of state plates To see the scandalous Thunder couple Pretend it’s the worst Road trip of their lives When they could not find A single donut shop In Bethlehem   We saw a...

I am a little harder to find these days At times almost impossible it seems But I’m still scribbling away Still painting the scene Which is really to say That I am still here Learning to see Each of us As we are Often hungry Sometimes filthy And always beautiful When I finally manage to see Beyond the most distant horizon And past the mirror that troubles me

There’s days when all I do is think About what I could have done What I could have said What I will do tomorrow What I want to say before I’m dead As if my life is some radio station And I am the DJ Lifting the needle Trying to choose the perfect album The perfect song With just the right words For the audience to sing along But instead   Indecision   A commercial...