For Amy Tan

Playing MaJong

On a rainy day

Balance of power and grace

Wisdom and strength

Lives yet to live

Pairs yet to match

Hoping to meet face to face

end lines

Parentheses- subjugated, slighter bride                     (afterthought)

She haunts my every inspiration

lesser, but always in mind

speaking when allowed

Hypertext- new story, waiting to be clicked                         blue

I make of her my Jane Eyre

Moor of fiery melancholy

Living tutor leading on

Ellipsis- three full stops, imagination                         what might have…

We can never be a novel

Tide and time against

Character and plot

Waterfall

Hair like water or

Water like hair 

flowing down the dam:

Rapunzel of spring, 

Thaw this heart,

puddle my footsteps

as they search for you

on this concrete wall.

And where she

drops her hair time can

not keep from dancing

her steps below swirl

freebubbling beneath 

ice like rice paper

above gives way

to this boiling ball.

Barefooted, she twirls 

her wedding gown around

making giddy guests and I

jump the new rainfall.

Easter Overture

Silhouettes and shadows recall the fire of the night before

ashes merely cold in dewy morning

Dull monotonous cricket like

the starlings together fill the gray with noise

A blackbird

now another sounds the flooded landscape

Then without warning from

the east

a mourning dove steps up not quite in perfect thirds

Then west

another dove returns the call more perfectly

A blue jay hides in silence till grief

the prophecy is fulfilled and her heart now breaks so quickly

thrushes take up the triumphant praise of

the pink tincture now threatening to bleed the sky

More doves moving

northward

The robin cradled in the dogwood cocks his head while

another pulls at the earth

In the distance

a woodpecker hammers at bark and the sky changes

Doves disappear as

the lone cardinal vested in glorious red swoops

south and over the fence and down and out of sight

1st draft

folllowing upon the reading and analysing of  Roxane Beth Johnson's poem Birth/Rebirth we brainstormed specific images from the Keswick winter retreat to compose a 1st draft.  Here is my attempt (please comment and give me some critique):

smiles, tears, microphone, guitarhands and drumstickmelody
from above heads gathered in arms
shoulders merge with hair
like a knot, or better still a rose
whose bud opens by confession
now blooms with compassion

tears water tender shoot
while the garden listens
glistens with recognition of
self, thorns and petals
protection, regection projected
and received

sounding

A dappled dreamscape

comes alive

where hooves of horses

overhead leave airy white patterns

a paddleboat below

huffing along churning up

voluminous blue ripples

I on the mountain

consider

the syncopation

of the hoofbeats and splashing water

wondering what other auditory evidence

an archetypical sunset

dream should hum

Slow the rising, falling sea

Knees wet below

chest above dry

watching waves (counting)

We turn like cowboys in the saddle

reignless but tethered we lie flat

looking right then left

stroke and stroke

which way will it break?

who has position?

I lean back and out

and watch shoulders and head on

a horizontal elevator bob slightly

below, above the line

the spray, the pirouette

And then back in the saddle

I turn and wait in

the slow falling, rising sea