Written vs. Spoken

Perhaps the written word is a stone that tells us that it has nothing at all to tell us

Whereas maybe the ever-shifting currents of the spoken word are most readily found in the disorderly commotion of a moth

Faith and Doubt

Perhaps faith brings the world to me
Maybe doubt brings me to the world

Miracles (after Whitman)

Perhaps a miracle is the story of a single seashell, outer skeleton composed of crystals squeezed from blood knit in tight rows to form a single dark line of amazing strength that spirals back to the very moment it was born.

Or maybe a miracle is the mourning dove bathing under the lawn sprinkler’s spray this hot summer’s day as the hot air balloon of my daydreaming carries me across a constellation of shining flight that washes me in to shore and out to sea countless times in a single flicker of thought.

No Pain, No Gain

Perhaps pain is a roaring ocean against the will, a whirlpool of historical burden stretching across the globe under cover of the know-it-all sky

Maybe gain is the music in its roar, and when reflected in our eyes extends its reach under the disapproving gaze of a loneliness that will never be satisfied

Here and Now

Perhaps here is the closest we ever get to sharing the distance created, no fault of our own, when morning becomes afternoon
in a whispering triumph over human isolation.

Maybe now isn’t such the unexpected burden we expected
it to be, swimming upstream amidst a myriad of miscellaneous experiential odds and ends, knee-deep in the unsaid.

Body and Soul

Perhaps the body holds its own swarm of bees
that feed daily on the sweet gaps between
words and what they mean.

Maybe the soul isn’t something we’ve stopped
depending on – a nothingness on the horizon
sinking below the surface of a conversation
that began thousands of years ago
in the rumbling of a foaming stream.

Magic and Loss

Perhaps magic
lets you survive your
own war

Maybe loss
is a maze of
what you don't want
to be happening
in your head