OverMy Head

a creature said
to fly close to God
this bald black bird
of prey or pray i've
seen twice in that
many days just soared over my 
head as clear as the
sky but much closer

something in me jumps
up i notice everything
for some seconds the
cardinal red in the tree
his mate's orange beak
how my eyes work in ways
i don't comprehend
even my blood clotted head
fresh from a cuncussive fall
on the ice of Maine parking lots
is working beyond what we call brain

the wind is like a whisper
today not cold but last night i heard her
speaking softly
into my sleeplessness 
in the dark i am always searching for
my source aware but not concisous enough
i go deeper

my mother's ancient snore 
my sister's need of a kiss
Marty who twice has done my
taxes for free giving of her
stout amazing gifts zipping through
what would have taken so much
time for me calling back money to the account
that so drastically needs it I'm thinking:
now that is God stepping into the library
at Norway, Maine typing, sending, being divine
today She is teaching me this:
there are so many ways to love this world

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Reminder: We Came From the Stars

i chant the names
of my children and my
children's children 
not so much a beget
of ancestry  a litany of love 
even more an opening 
to a Universe made of music
where there is only one choir
all of us angels today i am
mostly silent listening the
symphony beyond my song i 
chime in an occasional note
of harmony transforming from
this disquise of mortality into
divine reality a cosmic longing
rests always in the recesses of
my existence telling me of so much
more so much better than this grim
television show where everybody dies
and i am left to mourn believing the
insanity of humanity except now
listening i know i see with the one
eye the one mind the one love

moses of my own soul

i went to Boston yesterday
my wife loves the city the
beauty of buildings crafted
back when there was craft

boats bounce on the water
next to high rise hotels
no one I know can afford
cold wind as harsh as hell

we spend $70.00 of the little
we have left to survive here
no jobs in sight the low wages
laugh at our need to live

i wake before dawn fear riding
the wings of what brought me here
wondering again at my teneacious
insistence that i am here for a reason

part of me is done, ready for whatever
dimension is next undone by the harsh
nightmarescape of what this culture has
become i make the coffee grateful for it's heat

rural Maine has such harsh beauty i cannot
close my zipper to what surrounds me
i chase another possiblity read the offerings
on Indeed.com hoping to give what i have gathered in a lifetime

one application after another with no response
no one here in this land wants an old woman
to work for them youth is the idol of our idle
time, but depression is not a place to live, nor a way to die

i look around for some sign to keep me going
i hear...stand still and see the salvation of the Lord
wonder where that comes from and find Moses and Israel
with the Eqyptian army behind them waiting for the parting of the red sea

i hold out my tired arms without even a stick to say i am
somebody, a moses of my own soul, waiting with the army
of bill collectors on my tail, laughing that there is a sea
of unknown wilderness in front of me and the glass ceilings of

a life spent used up trying to stand for something i have like
Moses killed the wrong task masters and run from the world 
i don't know why i had to come back here pushed by a voice i
heard in a burning bush my shoes off my heart breaking

quaking with fear i am ready for the plagues, the future
my rucksack packed everything else has been given away
one last stand knowing i am not meant to enter the promised
land, only to know that my children's children will live there

i make a path for them with my tired arms held high
waiting for the impossible knowing it will happen
sure that i am here for a reason tired but not
done yet ready for a new kind of battle a drowned army a people free

A Vision of Change

early evening of fall just barely
chilly night holds all that will
ever be held in place for me again
as i am splattered across the milky way i
want to sparkle like the star i traveled
here from, want to light up the night sky
with my splendid demise a small big bang a collision
of stars their substance unknown, form ever changed

at the Asian restaurant my fortune speaks
of new opportunities endings and beginnings
holding hands in their walk across the Universe
these two seeming opposites entwined in my
fragile body, or am i really a body of light
chasing again the forever donkey's carrot where
i still seek a better world a loving habitat 
stepping outside the convention where the
speaches have been the same since they were invented
traditon as boring as the old man who sits in front
of his television, his only vision as blind as 
his cultural teaching that told him he was useless

for no known reason before he opens his old scripture 
the page falls open to words so astonishing he reads on
your old men will dream dreams he remembers
something about Spirit, turns off the broken TV
and goes to sleep awaking in his dream he is surrounded
by dancing crowds dreaming his dream it's like
a vision one he had fifty years ago when his kids
were young In the morning he carries his coffee outside
looks up for the first time in years his neck stiff
and cranky and then just as the sun comes into full
view he begins to dance.

Crisis and Opportunity

bashed in computer
criminal intent
tears shed loss
accepted the end
of an era beginning
of a new that will not
be denied though there 
is a small group that hates

my brother sending me one of his
my son rigging the old and holding
my hand on the new venture adventure
there is a large group of lovers lurking
in all the crevases popping up to give.
a circle of need and abundance just as
the gunshooters get to the pass a time of planting
and reaping lest we forget we have been
reminded that though the dragons seem to
hold power there is only One True Source

we are leaving but not cowering we are open
armed and loving we are a small puzzle piece
to this grand plan holding hands across the cosmos
laying new tracks to point the way a trail that
always leads home ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Moving Back to Maine

guess it's time to write 
anew poem about ending
all the old life is priced
with blue painting tape tags
twenty-five cents dishes we
ate on and the pans of the wrm
way i used to cook, 2 dollars
for the sheets we used to make
love on, a dolla for the tender
mercy of our mixing bowls
nothing for the way our world
got shreaded by evil intent
but turned into new begginnings
by the One who makes all things
New