Recovery Poem 2

Born to flirt
and write light verse
he grew more gray
each passing day.
Ever adroit with words
and quick to pursue
some bohemian triumph
that would never have occurred
of women to value,
his self just didn't fit, exactly,
as a shadow across broken ground
in late afternoon seems a caricature
of it's caster.
Nimble with objects, less so with lives,
those areas he found wanting
his God began to heal
in a most merciful act of Love,
deeming him complete,
a man.

No Longer Innocent

Few can remember,
clearly, when innocence
came to a sudden end,
the moment at which we ask
for the first time;
"Am I loved?"

Leaving Home

Clouds race across the ceiling
above the now-fallow vegetable-growing
alluvial plain I call home.
It's come to grow on me,
Salinas has, yet there's not
a bookstore to be found.
The crops and crowds flee
for the holidays, follow the thermals south
as geese seeking feed.
And I, frivolous wordling,
begin my plans to follow.

Words of Love

Were I Frost, or Neruda ,
ambitious words to love define
would drench my page.
But the haze that veils
as a shutting door, a wordless voice,
leaves Love's pleasure, and Love's pain
without me to explain.
Yet be assured of this,
had I them they would be yours
expressed cheek to cheek
and dear to dear.

Older

Older today (maybe some-the-wiser),

and recalling similar eve's

walking arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand,

heart-in-heart,

and discovering time's passed
unbeknownst,

but happy now,

though no longer near,

fulfilled this moment,

loved or endured.

Recovery Poem 1

On rabbit-trail paths
through scarring brier
thought's value seems diminished,
it's office grudgingly performed,
and actions deliberately chosen
lead to fells impassable.
I turn home now
no stranger to trials,
endurance now enabled,
uncontented to lie still.
What ugly feast my foe celebrates,
he will not have me today;
Rapacious creditor?  Indeed!

Language Problems

Each of us speak
in a local dialect all our own,
that alters with time and circumstance.
So why do you not understand
of what I think?