Player piano
presses type in prayer to platen
thinks about the future and its audience
now, a lonely chandelier
Friends in balconies –
elsewhere
Theater curtain whooshes open to acts
and splashes closed
to plaudits
Wistful rain
like I am being taken care of
home safe carapace from which I play
the carilon of keystrokes on computer
I sit in comfort of couch in presence of husband of love
the cat shifts her hind toes carefree in plush sleep
knowledge of oatmeal to come berries to pick
bees to visit
wish I could make things good
for all
~ Lady
A shearwater nests on the edge of a cliff
to fall in dream to flight in space
its cruciform wings skim tips of waves
and it follows the whales to feed on their wakes
~ Lady
Moment courts that I be not afraid but
trust the line I walk to time earned in
expanses of allowed whistles to a song
of self esteem, a bounce in my step, fealty
to sights noticed and ambient sounds heard
generous wallet and spontaneous talk
face slack, relaxed without frantic smile
except one come naturally like
sating rain
~ Lady
The colophon of a book
of the paradise of my life – would
I let myself enjoy it – includes block print bees,
fruit trees, pineapples, haystacks and
wheat wreathes, mint juleps and distillations
cultural and otherwise, figures in almanacs
rendered into prizes for specimens shown
at a county fair
We could walk into this streaming sunshine logo, me and thee,
holding hands up to the curlicue of a wooden arch drizzled
in vine, ducking under leaf and grapes and other emblems
of harvest and civilization
Or we can walk into someplace wild named only
by calligraphic monks and keepers of words
glossy books of birds come to life
Summer morning before it gets hot
swallows divebombing us in plucky cheer
us alien in overgrown grasses of a nature
preserve, new eyes of animated stick figures
a children’s drawing taped
on my office cabinet
Learning’s germ for fertilizing
eyes and ears, a head a heart, a hand,
a pen’s milt on action’s platform,
and it goes around again
~ Lady
Quartz glints hard in the eagle’s soft eye
flying over the lake’s scintillating stipple
sweep of wings one of time’s serene ways
From a canteen’s metal darkness
lightness is earned soft and wet
relief’s seeping drink
~ Lady
The drumming of my feet as I run
heats my blood, pumps my oxygen,
syncs my thought, my strategies to live,
so many strategies –
During planned time with the universe on my couch
I recalibrate, I seek to meet the ideals of my ethos
a breeze comes through the window
I taste serenity in my head
I release myself into being held
Here I am this me and we are we
wrapped in thought and sensation
Out there a nebula looks like
the Madonna and Child, a calm commentary
painted in vast matter and light
~ Lady
Odd lots of tertiary things
happenings dress the vast black
of my interior thought
the ornamented particulars
of my life
Hanging over the elaborate taffrail
purposed rosaries are plucked
from musical notes
bounding a watery surface
Decorations of devotion
scapulars draped from necks shush
and listen to soaring responsories
~ Lady