My Trumpet In The Fall

A spider slid down a leaf with the grace of an angel.
Life was crisp.
Love was a story written by the pen of a rippling lake.
The joy when the perfect day fades.


Like taking pictures of the moon,
Or unfolding the perfect bloom.
She whispered in my ear…
“In Heaven they play my favorite song.”

I’m suspended in your design.
You are my atmosphere.
You are my trumpet in the fall.

When my bear wakes up for spring (It likes to have water)

I’m ok with many things.
I’m ok with the way every night on Vancouver Island feels like the perfect Halloween.
I’m ok with reflections of the Rocky Mountains in glacier waters.
I’m ok with the wait for an agua fresca at the best Taqueria in town.
I’m ok with people talking too fast when they are exited.
I’m ok with people driving slow on Sundays.
I’m ok with glistening monuments on Memorial Day.
I’m ok that bears wake up in the spring.
It’s ok, they just want some water.

Proust’s Madeleine (Encounter with a Beekeeper)

What youthful sin left your eyes so hollow?
Was their venom in the sunshine of summers gone?
In a world so charmed by fresh, wet fruits…
why must you insist upon harmony’s decay?
Like the dingiest and most oppressive haze of an angry dust-
you descend.
There is no peace so near a hive.
I pray for the day you swarm away.

Dream Redux

Dreams are wars.
The bastards are worry soaked and plagiarized.
Last night, I wrote a book about the Great War.
I must be talented; I scribbled it out in four hours…
under the influence of wretched allergies and antihistamines.
It was full of maps, but not one crumb of a plot.
I looked across the huge oak desk at the publisher and begged for another chance.
My passion isn’t merely the ripped out pages of a forgotten encyclopedia.
I am more than just the stapled together narratives of the past.
I have words for the soldier’s mouths.
I have friction for the truth and lies.
“Please, master of my dreams, give me one more chance at life.”
He raised his finger like a gavel and spoke without haste and full of judgement.
His face haunted me like a purple coated business goon in the scariest of graphic novels.
He did not have kind words.
With that…I woke up and wrote.

Looking Off A Mountain In The Future

The man gazed off his mountain he always dreamed of having.

He breathed deep and moved his heart in motion.

Moments were no longer distinguishable between youth and middle age.

Happiness often came in waves like messages.

Messages came from priests, poets, and momentary unplanned lapses into silences.

A smile exerts itself into the world.

Sometimes they came at the expense of much effort.

On a good day…sometimes in the spring,

Smiles came in (to him) with the sun rolling through the blinds of his city home.

He spent these moments praying in all directions, directionless.

Let the moments, past and present, fill my soul with life.

Take the dreams of rushing and rolling water and rise.

Rise to ride once again.

Beginning to exhale, thoughts were

So full of life they bloated with the color of blood.

Ten moments time ten thousand.

…Bicycle spokes flickering in the air of a descending child on a small town’s hill.

…The flushing of and expanding of capillaries of an adolescent’s face

…Moments after a kiss that tasted like a snow cone.

…The squeezing head songs of liquor drenched collegiate mornings.

…The serendipity and force fields created by true friendships.

…Uncovering love after greyhound rides and unbridled loss.

…Highways becoming dividing lines between the loves and the loves not.

…Lower than low in a bed full of needles and mistakes.

…The uneasiness of moments of indiscretion.

…The burying and unearthing of history.

Life is a list.

Keep marking the remarkable.

Bless the faith of the faithful.

Love the lovely ones.

Fear the fearful ones.

My list is long.