The Missing Sister

Postcards, she sends
Unexpectedly
From a distant city
Wishing you were there
But you can’t follow
Can’t trace her steps
Your job, your friends,
The daily obligations
You’ve pushed her away
Yet see her face in every mirror
Your delightful, banished twin
You save each card
Until you burn them
Trying to forget

Cold shock
Birds fall out of the sky
The pain when a boundary
Can never be crossed.
Hidden anger
Fish float up dead in the water
The desperation in loss of time that
Can never be redeemed.
Suffering is suffused
Through the sensate world
While prayers rise like smoke
In the twilight.

Blurred Portrait

The charcoal eyes staring out
Above a smudged nose
The quickly sketched mouth
Loose, unformed,
With teeth exposed
The portrait blurred,
Soft, unfixed, temporary
Partially wiped away--
The truest likeness

Here
Not here
A space
But where?

You
Not you
An image
But who?

Dia de los Muertos

Remembrance
Recuerdos
A voice, a look,
A walk by the old graveyard.
Faces, yellow photos,
A tangled memory
A skein the living wait to enter.
Better to act as if dead already
Self portrait as a skull
Sugared with your name
In a candy coffin
Ready for eating.
Then let life take its course.

Birds in Autumn

Under the eagle’s wing
The sky darkens early on the mountains
By mid-afternoon—
While you wait at the modern, urban zoo
For the feathers of the lesser Bird of Paradise
To show among the empty spaces
All the tantalizing, fluttering, darting motions
Of tanagers and thrush
Distract and absorb you—
Away at the river
The crying gulls swoop over the white waves
Before the harvest moon rises
And the owl of the field takes flight.

Messenger of Fear

A messenger of fear
Came to your door
Although your house
From the outside
Seemed like all the others--
While you were sleeping
He passed through the broken lock
And filled the room with terror,
Waking you to the message.