Winter Soul

Short days
dwindling
long nights.

Click click click
something goes
caught in the wheel.

Echos calling
clearing our throat
of cold and colds.

Short nights
I will welcome
your retreat

as do the seeds
chilled in the mud
cells stirring to almost still

short days
farewell.

Short days
dwindling
long nights

here marks the change
the sun I watched die tonight
after now less sleeps

tomorrow
is a new day
another in long chain
of first days
circle after circle
stopping and starting
in a night like this.

Each long run
finds its own rest
then rises again.

Candle in a Room of Flashlights

I'm a candle
in a room of flashlights.

No switch
to turn me on.

I need heat,
I need the real light.

I need more than the flick of a finger
to get my fire on.

No single slide to arouse me all by itself,
no no no,
I need more.

Not trying to be greedy,
it's just what I am
and it is getting so lonely
being left behind,
the only light still out.

The only one that didn't settle,
and skip merrily into the common step.

The Rise

They made
the morning sun
for the early risers,

or for the rest of us
that find no peace
in going to sleep.

Such beauty
no matter our side
we can see.

It able to bring both disparate parts
into solution.

Such beauty
that brings all of
many walks
of many lives
out early many mornings
to fill common desires.

From lights radiated through miles of sky
to all the puffs of random
clouds in perfect arrangements
comes something every soul
has looked at smiled all the same.

Crushing Hearts

For the kids
there is only discovery

even in crushing hearts
or bugs
its all about seeing what
happens

and taking only little steps
from home.

Their love has so few games,
so few requirements,
so few ways to lose it.

Even in stomping the ground
they know where they don't stand
and where the warmth
can always be found.

Watching mine grow
I shed a tear
once in while
to know where they are headed.

All good
but yet
into this world

this world
that we the older
have mended so little.

Rules of many for
home and family
and all the importance
we wrap around words
like good morals
and values

and then leave such
a bad collage
of love and war
and peace and bombs
and knives and flowers
and tanks and shoes
and highs and boredom
and guns and arrows
and holes and bridges
and hearts and deaths
and so little knowing what we really want to do
or maybe just knowing little of why.

Doing all this for any thing more or less than just seeing what happens
makes it no better
in fact worse
when we already know
so
so well
what the hell happens in all we are doing.

They
the kids
have an innocence and a true
not knowing
and need to discover,

but they like us
are taking little steps
into us as we walk out of the picture.

I hope it is
all getting better
with each of them
than we summed.

Not Your Lunch

Close the lid
that is not your lunch
today.

That hunger
is a fuel
all its own

all its own.

Ready to eat
is a fuller state
than feed
measured in possibility
and creativity

or invention by old necessity

Close the lid
that is not your lunch
today.

That hunger
is a fuel
all its own.

Anticipation
is so much more alive
that good thanksgiving sleep.

Chase down
all you want to do about it
all the things you'd fix
all the love unloved.

Don't give in
and become satisfied,
that has ever only led to rest.

Love

Real

can be
and is

this love.

A lifetime of having someone
that will always read you stories to bed.

For there to never be lonely nights.

A love
that past all angers and slights
enjoys a permanent pardon on all missteps.

One
found
in always having a shoulder
to fall asleep on in minutes
when the trying without fails.

To have another's hands and arms
that can still take the world
and push it back outside.

Real

can be
and is

this love

that my children still have
and is the greatest gift I have ever
been so proud of being a small part of.

Want

There's what we want,
and then
what we want enough to have.

There's that life list
your proud to share,

then there's what you end up with
at the end of every week.

I can say grand things
and believe
in many ways to save the world
or just eat,

but too often I want someone else to be the hero
or maybe just often enough.

There are books
on our reading lists
there because of others,

because of what we want them to think
of us
not because
of something we really need to read.

There's what we want,
and then
what we want enough to have.

I walk
hand in had with my family
my partner and two daughters,

and the pictures I take
laid side by side
with all the rest I thought I wanted,

show
on one
real level

I already have it all.

Slim Directions

I sleep
clothes on,
prospects slim.

Or better than slim,
if you can actually go that direction
and have much
to smile
back upon.

At least it is
ever so easy
to sum up the possibilities.

No endless horizons
to stray the eyes on to pondering,

focus in the minimal
and essential.

No,
no
my needs
are more than this,

never mind.

This is like counting the register at an amusement park in November.

Everyone full of turkey
or dreams of
shopping lists,
warmer places,
and gifts to come.
Always everyone full of something
other than what they are,

but at least hoping forward
for happiness.

But still not the dreams of love
that claim the summer
almost whole.

I sleep in my clothes,
this is life
in its most
singular.

Vows servered me well
but into equalizing normalcy
one kind of down to to floor,

but an ooze,

no woo.

This is like counting the register at an amusement park in November.

Every once in while
we get it on and say hey
why
hey why don't we do this more
then the year rounds by and we do it again

never mending
the growing rift
that I hope
only swallows
itself.

This is like counting the register at an amusement park in November.

One easy task,
but so little to it,
that there are few memories to file.

So few memories to file,
yet every year there is another candle on the cake.

and I thought I'd be fuller by now.

Stars

They made this sunset
for me
and I don't care if I am wrong

as it
and the idea feels so nice.
I want to enjoy this
and still go home happy.

I want to walk with everyone else in the crowd,
nameless to the masses,
and still feel loved over alone.

Oh come night
and get everything cleared away
between me and my stars,

send me home with my stars
watching me.

Send me home
clear

and believing
in magic.