best poem i ever wrote

The Long Silence

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The fear I feel from not knowing
what is real is real.
Silent in this incipient stage
where I begin to search for a worthy answer.

Waiting for truth I paint sky
dripping down a cobalt red over indigo
shadows, pulsing flake white clouds
on dark cerulean blue hues-
let go one drip of cadmium yellow
and it falls and it falls
slowly in its steady trance
onto the horizon
the way a man falls
off a bridge and
from one world to another.

I read old papers, cut collages
from letters written after the bombing
in a Madrid train station.
While they are counting the dead
it rains for two days
a woman says it’s not raining;
Madrid is crying.

Sudan is crying
Israel is crying
Palestine is crying
Afghanistan is crying-
The ocean overflows with this salt
teared translucent water
flooding onto the earth.

1.
I go to Mexico for vacation
go to get away from life-
but there it is in Mexico
in Spanish.

In the corner of my room
behind the open door
two pigeons are mating,
one on the others’ soft back
cooing and cooing loudly,
their small storm blew in from my balcony.
I felt the breeze, heard the wonder
but it took a long time to look up from my book-
because I believed they were outside.

That is the way it was supposed to be with birds,
so soft and elegant and free
the way I was taught to see
despite small feathers on the floor.
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary,
I remain stubbornly clinging to ideas
more comfortable than true.

1.
Soon it is silent again
and I turn on the news to fill space.
The war goes on without much protest.
We grow powerless hearing numbers
numbers without faces
numbers that just don’t add up
no Fibonacci sequence
when our children die.

Pushed from one world to another.

2.
Leaning over the rail
I am balancing between the past
and future, in a moment
I will get old.
In that moment the past will pull me,
and the future will fold.

On the tenth floor I’ve become a cliff dweller
dreaming about what was,
peering into windows
framed lit squares,
cut from bits of star.

The moon still hangs like a giant pearl
on god’s neck,
over an ocean
glittering with sea-light.
Knowing all that’s vulnerable
can die,
but no storm puts out a light,
energy just moves
from one world to another.


3.
From my perch I
search the shapes floating,
unreadable, signs undulating over dark waves-
I think of diving head first like a fisher-bird
filling my belly with all those tiny lights
but I decide to take my time.

I am watching life from a balcony above Banderas Bay
baring witness,
but witness is not enough when casualties are being counted.
We are still building new Museums -
never again, and
never again and
again and again.


5.
I’ve become a collector of little auguries
pennies found heads-up.
I adjust my vision – to futures of children
not being anything like I’d ever imagined.
I am just now learning to appreciate
small victories, though they stopped
feeling sorry long ago
because being mentally ill is nothing to be ashamed of
being mentally ill is nothing to be ashamed of
being mentally ill is nothing to be ashamed of.
Life is harder, takes more courage some days.
Nothing to be ashamed of.
Still there is a grieving for what once was.

The titanium milk spills
from cracked clouds into 14 billion eyes.
But No one can really see.
As this stream
covers our cries-we listen
because the answer is coming-
I can feel it falling
from one world to another.