For All The Saints
How did I wind up inside
this monumental chapel
with no polite way out?
My thoughts float above rows
of red and yellow chairs
filling with people I’ve met.

Relaxed on the dark stairs
I watch how we all cough and shuffle
when the hymn starts.

I have come to feel happy.
When I make small talk, the lady in black
and white moves away. I spread out.

Before I wandered in
I was admiring my own name,
carved in marble
with the others.
Walking Out After Rain
How many times has it broken me,
this notion of perfect love?
The oaks in the park grow separately
though roots twine below, branches above.

Under the gleam of the trees,
dark branches are still raining,
the sound of the water has become
a sudden rush of the tide.

I am lifted up onto a wide
ocean of love. I am some
boat with sails swelling and straining.
I am the breeze.
The Magic Show In The Yard
Winter oak branches
toss their nets up high
and capture the sky.

Small pieces escaping down through
become goblets in our hands, glazed blue,

or ragged white handkerchiefs
that vanish, unraveling

or mirrors in which
when we insist on searching

for something in our eyes
that doesn’t die
we find only sky.