Fronting

Roadways pull these restless years,

Late summer burning early gold

On the evening leaves,

Open door weather at last

Setting the boxed air free.  

September is the time for travels,

After the bending and unbending

Of hot August, the humid dreams

Spent in stealth of night,

Dried by sunrise, nothing left to cool the day.  

You front the day—

How many fronted now?

Tolerate discomfort, discontent, until

You cease to mark the lack

Of meals filling hunger sharply felt,  

Neither the meal nor the hunger

For so long now of any note—

The dulling of the Life—

Until the surprise of a scent

Of supper in someone else’s home  

Reminds you it’s dark,

You walk the neighborhood alone.

These are stars beginning to burn,

This brightness is the moon, 

With crossing clouds

That smell of the sea.  

9/19/2012

Naiade

Formless, dark, the faceless deep

Unconscious of its swell

Before dry land sculpted

Solid banks, definitions

Shaping currents, commerce, Time

Malleable and responsive in wet gratitude

For land to push against,

Hope of sound and sense in

The ceaseless caress of water

Coursing to the limits of its shore. 

                                                                               September, 2012