Child

your name is Energy:
the result of sun
breeding with earth
in-between the cosmic bedclothes
of time without beginning.

You thought your people hailed
from the old sod
and you were assuredly right.
Solar heat broods in the dirt
below the crust. Plants send their tendrils
to test these depths, scouring nourishment
from such an improbable combination of parents.
Sun, the bastard child of heat and light,
your virgin mother, of water and soil.

You are immortal.
Energy cannot be destroyed,
and time is illusory.
Reduced to but an atom, you will still join
some new incarnation of powerful life,
the remainder of you perhaps buried
as dust motes drift into a dune
across the top of some deserted windowsill.

The feathery precipitation builds up
layer after layer
accounting for time through accumulation.
Neither time for beginning,
nor time for the end. But time to continue,
time to replay,
time to remember your noble lineage.

Your name is Energy.

(appears in A Gift of Wings, published by
Perspectives in memory of Kristen Biss)

God Blinked

God blinked
a sherbet sunrise peeked
sleepy songbirds stirred
the morning hours slipped

God smiled
the sun clung to a cloud
a crowd lazed on the lawn
the afternoon sped

God yawned
a salmon sunset sunk
workmen hurried home
the daylight dwindled down

God dozed
a crescent moon crept
souls securely slept
the stars fell from the sky

And God blinked.

(appears in A Gift of Wings, published by
Perspectives in memory of Kristen Biss)

Oh, Pioneer

Your car has been parked
off Highland
for weeks,
one tire flat,
and now
a parking boot
crippling this rusted hulk.

All summer you kept
pumping hope
into that one soft wheel
but it’s autumn now.

Take what belongs to you,
leave that ferrous lump
and jump a bus

to anywhere that’s better-
better than this chickenshit
day-to-day we wade through.

Aldous Huxley was only half right
because this isn’t that brave a world
and it’s certainly not new.

Who knew which of us would have to be the pioneer,
but I’ll keep part of you here
if you take a part of me along

And before too long
I’ll be right beside you.

(appears in A Gift of Wings, published by
Perspectives in memory of Kristen Biss.)