last poems

1.

speak to me of loss and redemption


speak to me of loss and redemption
my Love,
fly me to the summit of our separation
and let me feast upon your clouds,
part this veil of unknowing and bring
to me the manuscript of life everlasting,
let your words not fail me when the shroud
of silence beckons me my homecoming;

what is the worth of an unexamined life
that should end an untold death yet let not
one whisper grieve? shall the lives of ten thousand
warriors bend the truth rewritten on even one politician's fanciful tongue?
can a plastered smile of falseness spread joy
with the alacrity of starlight and not leave the soul
famished and starving in the afterlife? shall a child of war dying
in the arms of his mother
be enough to set the world ablaze with redemption?

who shall pluck the last desert flower from all the decay
that walks silently with a leper's mask?
who shall bring
prayers to my grave and light a candle in the dark?
return me
to the depth of my earth if not Love,
walking alone in Paradise,
uncreated and stillborn.

2.

hands of prayers


where the ruins are,
the sun rises with violin strings
like an adagio
for the heart,

there you will find
the sun setting on
your purple robe of light

shadows
crossing
fields
of destiny
with angel's wings

dreams of peace
lifting
you to
higher realms,

soaring
with love.


3.

we grow little vine tomatoes


you wrote a poem once about a little tomato
and so did I,
we, lamenting the last splotch of red
amoung all the decay of summer into fall
and autumn into winter's death,
you and I as near as the distance light
travels to touch our hands across five hundred miles
of sky

this morning
I opened the sliders to the deck, it had been raining
and the night's storm broke the spider's net
again;
but while you are sleeping upstairs in our bed,
our children are growing,
ripening on the vine,
little gifts of wonder

soon our joy will be complete
and our cherry tomatoes
will have been loved by the sun
and rain enough
to taste like a little bit of heaven
from the loam of earth under our feet,
our lovemaking
growing poetry like the cornucopia of
ripening tomatoes held in our hands,
books we have yet to read,
tastes we have developed
as the heron flies to the river
and stands motionless,
waiting...