Shoes
for Primo Levi
Where are your shoes?
As a woman in birth
I squat to examine my feet
One soft shoe sole gone
the other unravels
like peeling layers of bark
My guide parades his new shoes
What do you do? he demands
I'm a poet.
You're a fool with no shoes.
I contend, I'm no longer a slave!
my mind looking back at
Arbeit Macht Frei
Work Makes Free
Scarred feet bleed
onto dirt roadside
I burned with fever.
The Soviets held the shoe store;
I was afraid.
He glares with the noonday sun
I too had a fever, didn't know
if it were day or night,
but I had a long road ahead,
saw the sentry with his sten gun
and broke in the back door.
I have shoes.
Many kilometers to walk
and I have no shoes
Tears smear my cheeks
I still believe
I am free
Sea Staccato
between checkered sheets
we dance your latest absence
lost in our push and pull
tide outside recedes
captures algae crab and sea star
a halibut drifts its same sided eyes
stare at galaxy's nebulae
I sip from a fluted glass
play music around its edge
you nip my fingertip
taste the tang of champagne
dipped strawberry
wind sports upon waves
water sneaks to tidepool
we breathe atoms
from origins
like the sand and the sea
we kiss
Flowers Sing Under White Stones
The copper rufus darts to gather sugar-water
daunts other hummingbirds
Lavender seduces bees
moths butterflies
Near dawn elk devour roses
Monsoons douse the mountainside
God Bless America croons over FM radio
Another warrior dies for God and country
as flowers sing under white stones
Mood Indigo
I indigo you
the splash of sky
within winter night
like new crescent
moon smiling lopsided
with smirk of voyeur
We read Kama Sutra
by candle beam twin
to bare moon glow
slanting through window
pane nuance on hollow
of white neck and twirling
hair bound like phylacteries
around hand and fingers
O God O God
Fingernails catch slant light
as love wounds bleed
Soft forgetfulness
blankets caress of souls
burning tattoo into dream
the rise and fall of flesh
Rehearsal
Miniature dancers spiral
inside a glass dome as the music box
tones Chopin's Waltz Opus 64 No. 1
A girl winds and rewinds the key
moment by moment
Her lips blackberry stained
kiss an almost carmine cat
The grand piano unclosed
like a mouth ready to sing
the woman places her long fingers
on old ivory and ebony
over and over
Time after time
the woman daydreams
the girl Tiny ballerinas whirl
a holy water of salvation
into memory's eddy
again and again
Her waltz dances on angel wings