poems by ink

fragments
I woke this morning
to the sunlight in my eyes,
my dream on my lips.

Through the dank and dense
peers the sun
a watery smudge
on the edge of the sky.

Outside my window
could be South America,
with an orange tree and the rain.

Theories of the Universe
Perhaps it is flat
lying on the back of a tortoise
held in the palm of a hand
on the outstretched arm
of a spinning galaxy
encased in a celestial sphere
in which we are at the center

Early Memory
Early morning
first sunrise
colors tickle the horizon
slowly
as I watch
cradled in the arms
of a poplar tree

Spider
Under stars that cannot be seen.
Against a sky made brown by streetlight and smog.
Between two trees shaped like poodles.
I sit with the air wrapped around me,
a heavy blanket I try to shrug off.
Above, a spider silently tends
to its garden of sticky strands and silken bugs.

Transfiguration
The foam is snow upon the sand.
The clams, pebbles beneath my feet.
I am a mountain, laying on my back--
I am bathing in the moonlight,
while breathing in the night.

"Night Vision"
I'm standing in slow motion while everything around me moves in double-time. The weight of the music pushes on my eardrums,
breaking through to my brain, passing over the coils and crevices, settling into the recesses.
I feel my heart beating under it, a steady pulse always in time. And I try to see myself as everyone else does,
but no one sees me as myself and so they don't see me at all. So the people pass by,
with their eyes down and their teeth out, because everyone is afraid and we all try to hide.

"Rotterdam"
Their bright yellow and orange robes stood out against the drab grayness of the day.
The bells they wore jangled out the rhythm to which they walked. They held their faces
up to the sky and smiled, their mouths' full of joy. Flower petals were tossed up
into the air and swirled around them and passers-by who joined in on their parade.
From behind a window splattered with raindrops and drizzle, I sat and watched
as the steady flow of celebration passed me by. I sat silent and still,
taking it all in with a breath and a beer.

"Grunion"
We went down to the beach, armed with flashlights and hope.
The sky was black and open, the clouds having thinned out, leaving us with
only the stars and the bright disk of the full moon.
Up and down the beach we walked, trailing behind the beams of light that bounced before us.
Up and down the beach we walked, the tide coming in on our ankles and then to our knees.
I lay back on the ground, the damp sand a pillow for my head, to let the grunion come to me.
I closed my eyes for a moment, to see what the night felt like. When I opened them again,
I saw the stars begin to move and turn into birds flying along the Milky Way.