Like Counting Gulls

Foreign fighters flock

to the tune of a billion terrors.

The instruments, though digital,

still function as pre-medieval.

Sledge hammers do not erase

seven millennia of  stone history

so much as make virtual icons

of jackass perpetrators.

We down play perpetuation

as armies trek their annual

migrations across capital capitols.

All those domed spaces

seem to need the toll of bells

as they gleam under star fall.

We go strewn as shrapnel

and broken seashells

under the constant trickle

of time, the infinite ripple.

All pools at tidal edge.

Now you see the next combatant

lose all his downy feathers.

His hands no longer useful

for letters. Language lacks 

both permanence and perfection

no matter which prophet speaks.

Almost Buds

We were the winter trees

in chill mist and dank,

close as glass to drizzle.

I remember your hand

settling around the page

under the pillow

and between days.

We drank hot tea and talked.

Deep thoughts and serious,

we laughed at society

and our lack of place.

The equinox and new leaves

dot a weft of twigs and stems;

fringe the mist with promise.

How impossible

being this age

and never pledged.

Circumstances force us

to be the forest.

We come to a place

where memories rest.

A stone throat speaks

the heart’s silence.

Under Doll

The media eye rolls

over the female body.

This is not everybody.

I find myself in front

of the cutting edge.

Hold the honing steel.

The oval, the opal, the

range finder fastened

securely to the barrel.

More than Mississippi

nights flow through

grassy boundaries.

Could this be big fur?

I’ll take the baseball—

paint your face on it.

Could be my home run.