zinc words & images

  • Vision

    Do you value beauty, Black bird, black eye? Behind my garden wall I buried seed and stone While you watched. A Mosquito pricked my arm As I brushed aside a Yew branch left from some Past life I couldn’t remember. A gust carried you to My roof and you spoke, Though I could not Hear…

  • Evening snow

    Snow crisped the leaves That had settled Near my doorway.   My eyes met the oak tree’s As it stood guard against the wind.   Through the window, I could see this and the Remaining Christmas trees, On the neighborhood curbs.   When the evening dims, The windows across from me Become the artificial fire…

  • Feast

    A crisp edge on my plate At Le Quartier. I’m Reminded of the Saline oysters which Hemingway consumed And then described. Perhaps It is less the food than A feeling of timeless Observance. A table, A chair, sustenance and Pleasure. If the day is Cloudless, fine, but with A few clouds all the Better. In…

  • Flora

    Some say opening, blooming, But each petal unwinds Itself across the air, Denying gravity’s hands And existing only for itself And its encircled sisters.

  • Reunion

    Regress. Redress. These last lights guide us home Without resolve. And with blue Waving to us from the neon Night we regard each other as Strangers.   Fictive. Addictive. We move time away like layers Of dust. Thick with apprehension, Lacking revelation, I Wipe my mind’s eye of our last Question.   Fortune. Ruin. In…

  • Shadow passing

    I stayed up To watch the sun Rise in your eyes. It was every Expression Imagined. You became warm And enriched, Burning even. Your palms glowed, Ripe with lengthy Summer light. I took your hand In mine and was radiant.

  • Untitled

    Wood wraps it’s way Through the ground. I Have read without Fungi, trees don’t thrive. The muck makes it Possible to live A canopy dream. Air Shifting your body To the rhythm of each Passing cloud. If I wrap my knuckles Along its trunk, I can Feel its skin, the rough Whorl of time. The…

  • Interim

    I can see my fingers glowing With that particularly human Tone, when each tiny wrinkle and pore Captures the midday sun like the Undulating current of an Ohio Valley Wheatfield. Gold beneath blue Beneath yellow beneath red Beneath silver. A Renaissance Puzzle to be solved only Through that perfect mix of Oil, turpentine, and crushed…

  • True promise

    Lessen the lively way You say, forever. Forever Is not what you think it is.   Burnished steel with oil And old cotton shirts. Buttons On fire when the world ends.   Is it a guidepost or clock, An imperceptible second or The sun’s arc across the sky.   More so fatal reasoning And an…

  • Threaded Through the Air

    On my way home I saw a song or rather I felt a song and saw the man singing it. He was on a street corner bus stop, waiting, mouth open, leaning back for diaphragm’s sake. The sound traveled through my closed window and I turned to look and thought, yes, I feel that way,…