need to write

sometimes my soul feels as though it's withering,
sere as desert plants too long deprived of liquid.
writing is my hydrotherapy. only the right writing
will plump and buoy that wispy intangible portal
to life.

intense thirst may be slaked and assuaged
with the perfect word and phrase angled just so
reaching acutely into the depths of being and
tapping, touching, tipping its point on release valves
buried obscurely in mine ephemeral density.

ah. here we are. lost no more. words again save me
from flying ungrounded. Anchor and preserver in
one, a phrase reaches air and I am whole once more.

i can see, hear, feel, breathe, sigh, sit, settled in an
old comfort, a familiar rut. I recognize this in my
bones, my heart, chest, lungs. I breathe deeply,
returning home at last.

48

Autumn nips at
summer's heels and I'm
melancholy baby.

Sprawling unkempt
ungovernable garden
mirrors me
all over the place.

Basil and mint in flower,
just ripe tomatoes
and crowded carrots
signal a nearing end,
while the maize hue
of sunlight in these
shortening days
hints at harvests
yet to come.

I miss the bright
joy and promise
of June where hope
took root
for a time.

A Majestic Demise

My pace is slower now,
leaving me free to notice
white elephant ear fungi
sprouting overnight
on the trunk of my dying
maple tree, the one that
failed to penetrate hidden rock
and establish its taproot.

First its bark grew green-gray
with lichen. Branches,
brittle with thirst, broke off
with abandon. And leaves aged
too early, when they even
appeared at all. Woodpeckers

burrowed a nest for three

into drying pith.

Gusts of wind bode ill for
the giant's fate. Its hulking
mass threatens those once it
sheltered. Soon its
comforting bower will yield
to axe and saw; its
remains to exist in memory
alone.

I will notice its absence
as I did its slow decline,
inexorable fall from
stately splendor to dangerous
decrepitude.

My maple's effort to thrive lays
shallow within grass,
roots bulging and bursting
through as they seek to
slake the deep arboreal
thirst. Home to wasps and
worms, those stout wanderings
failed in their quest.
Not rootless yet nearly as
unstable, glorious maple
now ceases its search
for sustenance.

Now it sustains other, more
alien life. Fungi of many hues
flourish everywhere;
sickly yellow flaps under bark
and coal black globules
where root and earth meet.
Deep orange crust
barricades the open cleft
of this vulnerable majesty
while tiny grey ledges form
climbing walls for ants.

Squirrels chase tails up and back,

thick boughs their resting

place and launching pad onto

wires and mischief. The end rushes

toward us.

Those elephant ears
are not like Dumbo's. They
herald a permanent grounding,
the end of days. No more
soaring above people,
cars, streetlights and homes.

The pace quickens. Still
I am in no hurry
to say goodbye.

Protection

It's not enough to be useful when you need me
and discarded when you don't.
Damocles' sword dangles, pricking me
when I least expect it.

That's the shock. I rest secure
until
I'm reminded
brutally, baldly, boldly
of my precarious aerie.

One step out of line and down I fall.
One heavy footfall and crunch go the eggshells.
Disaster strikes despite all precautions.

I can't close my heart simply for protection.
Don't love so much! cries the wounded girl.
How can I not? weeps wounded me.
It doesn't work like that prolapse valve,
opening and closing, over and over,
keeping out the bad and letting in the good.

My prolapse valve is broken anyway.
I have no screening left. Good and bad flow
indiscriminately.

It's not enough to be there when you need me,
discarded when you don't.
But I have no choice.
Pointless to complain.

Not that you heed it anyway.

I try to build a wall
of ice.
Joyful love melts it.
I can't refreeze it fast enough.

"Run more like a business"

Baby boomers heed the call to
Seek meaning in our lives.
"Make a difference" is the hope.
The entry fee seems low.
Just teach the skills from business,
and make non-profits grow.

Migrants from for-profits say
it's numbers that should matter.
Measure your impact,
count those dollars and cents.
Balance your sheets
and cover that bottom line.

Will that teach a child to read?
Glean potatoes from the field
and fill the empty belly?
Heal illness and end disease?
Give a home to a family and
love the abandoned infant?

Boomers seeks to save their souls
bring their balance sheet to rights
but what is really shifting here?
The person or the field?
A battle rages for the soul of charity,
it's profit versus love.

Balance sheets are reassuring to the brain.
But wise spending does not occasion giving.
Giving is from the heart and a sense of community.
Can a number awaken generosity of spirit?
What do we lose in pursuit of profit
in a not-for-profit realm?

Traveling

My path is tortured, tortuous, twisted and delightful.
Around every turn is the inevitable unexpected.
I see near and far other paths with their rises, mountains, plains and vales
and pine for them. Wistful choices not mine to make.

By turns the yearning deepens abysmally.
Rivers run with lost possibility, fed from my aquifer of tears.
Loss taps into geysers, smoothing sharp pains.
And I keep moving, curious.

On a rise, I turn back to behold an amazing vista,
the marvelous scope of my life. Only then do I comprehend
the landscape sculpted by experience, deeply detailed by pain and by love,
colored by feeling, and shaded by other paths entwined with mine.

David

Omnipresent shadow circling like the hawks you so loved,
constant reminder of what was taken and what was not to be.

The depth and breadth and scope of grief are boundless as I like the mariner strain to see
beyond the horizon, quietly desperate for landing and journey's end.

Is that true? Journey's end is to join you, sweet boy. The adventure's over,
I will have completed the ride. I'm not ready.

Far better to keep you alive in heart and mind, have you share in my journey
with yours so cruelly ended.

We move together, I see through your eyes, I hear your whisper,
I feel your absence. The breadth and depth and scope of love equals the maw of loss.

Ever present boy, you are my shadow. A presence in two dimensions,
the third composed of memory and tears.

Omnipresent shadow, we are joined forever yet not one.
Still, shadowed joy is yet joy.