In the Silence of Despair

O heart, dance!
Dance like a jewel of the moon,
candlelit star-speck
leaping through space ...
your spirit, incandescent like Venus,
dressed in Mercury's pastels,
gleaming ...
while the bands of Jupiter,
celestial bracelets and anklets,
ennoble your hands and feet,
those flowing interpreters
of the speed of light.

Left

When your deeper thoughts don't matter
and only shallow ones will do,
When conversation isn't sought
beyond a nodding, smiling you,
You disappear behind your eyes
and they don't even know,
Nor do they give a thought to you
after they turn and go.

Taking the Wheel

Lane blocked
Route closed
Try a new way

Pass over the overpass
to claustrophobia of possible lostness:
stuckness
at an unknown traffic light
(for the car must not move, must not move ...
and the gas pedal must not twitch).
Panic rushes in -- self fading away, senses swimming --
I swallow it down
to breathe as traffic light
frees me.

Inundated by halos of light and cascades of moving cars --
monstrous construction, like a World War II re-creation,
walled off on the roadside --
I employ tunnel vision to get me through,
concentrating in order to breathe at all,

holding feebly onto consciousness
against consuming terror --
that long-put-off dread of driving on complex highways
and on intersecting highways at night.

How far -- the destination?
How far?
Shaking all over,
I arrive.

Fearful again, later,
I make it back home,
suddenly changed,
stronger,
strong (!),
somehow having just recovered -- after decades --
the sense of having
rights.

Priorities

Person 1: "Can you share with me one of your most meaningful life experiences?"

Person 2: "I was born."

Nine Lives Later

Evening breeze wafts in

from the window above,

pats my face

with angelic love,

soft whisper of hope

toward breath of dawn ...

Why is the life that I knew

all gone?