Poetry

I watch the Spanish moss 

On Port Republic Street. 

Carolina curtains, hiding me in robes. Gray ghosts, chained corpses, fleeting flora Dancing, swaying, feeling. 

Opacity orchestrates the silvery garlands To move as if shadows – seamless and haunted. Night settles into the salt, 

December by the sea, Oak’s ornaments. The moss drapes over the limbs, 

Around the bookstore across the road, Above my grandmother’s grave, 

And into my mind. 

Hushing thoughts, 

Sketching stories of the South

When Strife has worked me through,  

Her hands full of profit coat my wounds with wages,  

The day by then is nearly done;  

Not even the hermit keeps vigil at that hour,  

Only the lost and unwilling keep their eyes open,  

Looking towards the morning’s promised resurrection.  

Once compensated for my daily work,  

I gladly take my leave,  

The highway stretches before me with indifference,  

No beginning or end for millions and millions of miles—  

The thought of a comfy rest lightens my heavy heart.  

My hands loose on the steering wheel,  

I join the great community of night time commuters,  

An elect spared from the odyssey of early-evening traffic. 

Soon I come upon the home,  

The false glow of electric candles beckon me inside,  Gladly I accept, and step from my car into the calm outside.  But there, there I saw my constant point,  

Raised among its siblings, though sharing nothing in common,  Great Polaris called me in silence from the earth below:  Who could help but answer the best they could? 

My limitation soon became apparent,  

No radiant palaces among the cosmos could I travel to,  Being the featherless biped of dust and atoms,  

Yet Polaris continue calling me,  

A burning bush in my nighttime Exodus.

I will lose you in my sleep.

Chasing fragrant fever dreams, 

I find you folded anew in the sheets

when I wake. 

I run the lengths

of highways,

California stretches of 

asphalt nothing—

I sweat and the tears from my eyes don’t make a 

difference—

I think the sun knows that my knees will give 

out on mile thirty-nine.

I like it when the sky

opens like a chasm on the upside,

you are the gaping maw and I do 

not mind being small in the green, green

grass as 

long as I am witness 

to the springs here on Earth. 

Maybe I will outrun the sky. 

And if my joints do split open 

on mile thirty-nine,

make it bear witness to 

the golden sun.

I will put myself 

back into pieces you can identify

if you are willing to 

meet me on the other side.

And we are simply

part of two,

whole,

big-small things

turned inside out and back

again.

I cannot compare you to the sun

because of the 

way you meld,

the way sunbeams begin inwards

and start in my heaving chest,

right from your fingerprints. 

I am dying 

a sweet death

because I know this is rebirth. 

I think when G-d created light

that there was pain.

An aching,

lovesick pain that brought birth,

through that knee-jerk heart swelling 

deep into the canyons and sky so blue 

the flash of light that 

swallowed the world up at once and brought 

it back in one whole piece. 

I think Adam and Eve felt shockwaves 

when they first opened their eyes

that made their hearts stop.

And for a second,

they felt like they were dying. 

There is a flood and I feel as though

I will tear into a million pieces,

and you will put me back together again.