When Harps Fall Still

When harps fall still on moon-silk beds,

And ice-rich seas plump blue-steamed threads,

The pale-horned peaks reap themselves asunder,

The raven force of diamond quarks scallop into wonder.

Interwoven waves fray the senseless bare,  

Silver strands loot a saluted lair,  

The diametric dew of saints lapis-hewn,

Turquoise coils glaze over in tune.

Snow-flaked dunes sweep ripe-less mist

Into panoramic veins of time-churned bliss,

Star-vapored canopy of tempo-tasseled rhapsody,                           

The ghost song of atoms unchained.

The Redwood Rises

  “For Man is like a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19)

The Redwood rises, surging up,

Converging where it pierces sky    

Capped by mist and cloud,

At the point

Where He is, a bridge to -    

        

I call up, golden haired,

“I long for you."

Leaves rustle down,

“Climb up, then.”

I wince at barbed branches as wind whips,

Cling at gnarled ridges as lightning quivers,

Burrow beneath canopies as rain slaps,

Blink at the sun splitting out from behind

The Redwood’s trunk.

The yearn to rend the red tower in two,

To quicken time and pull space

Towards me, to bridge -  

But sky nears drip by drip,

My hair now tired silver.

I gasp out, “Where?”

Leaves ripple all around, “I’m here.”

I brush aside the last tendril,

And meet wisps of cloud.
No, one?

Edel - White

Sunlight filters in through dusty blinds,

Dances on a China-blue vase, brimming with edelweiss,

Overshadowing my Bill of Rights homework, abandoned

On the dark-veined table.

My grandmother shuffles in, her gaze

Traces cotton-coated petals. Her eyes,

Envelop me, same gray-blue as mine,

And I fold in -

To a Carpathian valley of sweet gale and rolling pine,

Whistling to the barred warbler’s tale, gray-blue eyes

Of a man, plucking clusters of edelweiss

For his wife to fluff in a China-blue vase -  

Beside my homework, on the dark-veined table,

My grandmother rests a yahrzeit candle

For those who had no Bill of Rights,

Her lips pressed white, edel-white.