last night the moon did not hold the sky in the arc of her cradled arm. (or - some ineloquent thoughts)

last night the moon did not hold the sky in the arc of her cradled arm, instead pregnant and blooming she grew to give birth to the night. then came sleep before morning before being roused by birdsong to vertical. open windows allow the room to exhale. the swollen river called and, of course, what can you do but accompany part way on it's serpentine journey through the green of the city. amazed and grateful for the way the earth readily accepted and accepts your feet. poems collected along the way - a lichen clad twig, a sprig of last year's ash keys and pine sticky fingers. there are trees that keep the names of lovers carved in their flesh the way we encase our memories in amber. for always you have prefered the woods to the sea. the green and the dirt and the life and the death. and of course the magic. have you ever noticed the way the clouds sometimes merge in to one? at these times surely they could muffle the way a heart sounds as it bursts, or breaks. there are moments when the body speaks louder than words from a mouth so full of diamonds. you want to be love and believe there are many ways to kneel at the alter.

unlike stars that turn red before they die

i make a poor first impression

and sometimes the days just aren't long enough

to recall all the things we left unsaid,

but go on knowing anyway.
 

all the beautiful things stick in my throat.
 

your face tomorrow i imagine painted

with the silence of one lost for words.
 

with my body i absorb

the light from other people's windows

and gather you from my corners.
 

today in the library the unmistakable scent

of the perfume in the egyptian glass bottle

that sat on the bookshelf a million moons ago.
 

prone to exageration, but still

so many ways to time travel.
 

dear sacred heart, there was a time i stopped short

of feeding you the marrow from my bones,

but wrapped myself in clouds and waited.
 

longing to be the light for which you dug so deep.
 

fingers would fumble the rosary
of nights strung together like star studded onyx,

but (the epiphany did come) your heart, your vision,
ultimately were restricted

by the thin slats of your beautiful eyes.

benedicto

"may your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. may your mountains rise into and above the clouds. may your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."~ 'benedicto' by edward abbey