Drifting to Peaks

This wind blows inland,

split and spun by upfolded mountains;

leaves echo in the valleys.

Earth rises up

to lift the vault of heaven.

Luminous

“Take care of my heart,”

I tuck my childhood toy

Into my wife’s purse

As she packs our boy

For a flight to Florida

To my brother’s house

As I stay behind.

Chewbacca,

Roaring guide to the stars,

Protect them and

Guide them home

Navigating Mountaintops

Footsteps forward find

sudden strikes and thunderings.

This flag at half mast,

fifty years back plus a day,

King’s voice rose as raindrops fell

On seeing my son’s face, finally, asleep

We begin and end in anger

Every morning

Every night

At war with exhaustion

I don’t want to do this

Be this man

Be this monster

Be this father

Flag and Clock

Both perch by the door,
poised and moving,
defining and cutting the day to pieces,

slicing life into divisions

Lake Champlain Mountain Sky

“… a mountain, especially…is land’s attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded flight, the earth mutated — nearly — into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted,” Salman Rushdie.

Outshined

 We are young. We dance 

With death. And because we dance 

So beautifully 

She will lend us life forever

Introductory Science

The first toy I fashioned for my first son,

a rocket carrying a satellite,

New Horizons. He shouted,

“Off to Pluto!” And on

to bath time experiments in buoyancy and displacement.

Displacement came first:

This is space, fluid yet finite,

add too much, or many, and it spills

up and over, beyond its finite bounds.

The matter of addition matters little:

a figure from the edge, a block for a wall, a dolphin of the sea?

All spill out beyond too tight lines of demarcation.

And buoyancy?

Displacement’s opposite,

buoyancy violates limitation:

a breath, a stillness, an intake and a softness,

and my sons rise above

the surface of the bath,

the surface of the sea,

the surface of this bound and spilling moment

only a launchpad,

if we are willing, to seek

new horizons

Jubilee

Delight strikes. His looks 
sing life, sing love. Perfection,

my son’s dancing eyes 

Valentines 2017

You make me blue so I can breathe when I loop myself in green brambles,

And whiteness bites less

than it did

when I stood the field alone.

A beyond-black blanket of touch and whisper 

Often twines our flesh,

And a muddled plain of blown purple and brown tumble 

Opens azure and gold

When I come to rest within your gaze