Noisemakers

New year
dressed in the old
year's clothing. Camouflage
and gunfire shatter any plans
for peace.

Decomposing

dreamscape
of fallen trees
a silent vigil held
by mosses and lichens in your
honor

The Hurt You Cannot See

...they asked her to tell what happened only to discount her memory... (Lorna Simpson, "Waterbearer," 1986)

Fractured
in places hard
to imagine. X-rays
only show a fraction of what's 
broken.

“All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

― Nikola Tesla

For Ken:

Blueprints

In your

childhood pictures --

the gaze of one whose mind

is on the verge of inventing

something.

Cindy Tebo

Welcome to Memphis

rainy
Fourth of July
just outside of Graceland
no Elvis but the thunder keeps
clapping

Editor's Choice, Sol Magazine, 2003

(Link no longer available)

     Ringing In The New Year

bird chirps echo throughout the morning as if to say this is the here and the hear after

“Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.” 

~ Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

~ Author Unknown

(Attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne, but according to Quote Investigator this saying appeared in a newspaper written by someone with the initial "L". More details available on this site.)

Migration 

(originally untitled)

monarch
trains heading south
into the trackless air
dew on the engines that push them
onward