Aisha

"Am I a thread woven on a loom?"
A sister bends her chador-draped head
to the task at hand.  Soon.
Birth of her choosing:
a zig-zag, a quiet rose, a hidden cross.
When her husband comes home
she looks lost
yet works perfectly well

in the kitchen he leaves to her
as her domain -- "Stay,"
she says to a friend
only she could make,
"Stay for a spell and drink some tea."
She pours from her mother's service
for the friend only she may see.
Aisha has gossip to tell.

Ambition

On the highest vine does my fruit grow;
I shoot at it with bow and arrow --

Fall to Earth.  I feast
on marrow.  Death leaps

In to tell me one day I, too
Will die.  When I lie

I shorten my life by years.
Why?  I should end it then.

A Spider's Tale

One Saturday we met --
Some friend's apartment.

You glanced my way,
Saying my name twice

Dear Lord!  Did I think?
I drink to people this nice

Who early grow old,
Who told stories and sold

Their recycling at the store.
Origami men arrived before

My date.  Hire a whore --
This one gives me the hives

I'm sick to death of him.
How lucky to have had the chance to sin.

(On Earth as it is in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.)

Danse Macabre

Tonight the dead do magical feats
We watch them, clap our hands to the beat

Streetlights and headlights mingle and glow
They add a reverent overtone

To the eternal funeral of a home
Buried as its former tenants roam

A busy Earth unhappy to see
Where in the end we none of us can but be

Evergreen

Water is coldest here.
The timberline is to my right.

Close enough to hear
sunlit pines murmur,

a continuous rush
or a low, low roar

spread thin for miles.
One seed drops, spirals

to the forest floor.
In a year, a sapling

will grapple with nutrient-poor
granite-ridden soil.

It is the toil of the tree
to live still and free,

to tower above man,
to die at the end of a golden hour.

Shade

These are your thoughts
Captured on film:

Glowing green and white,
Casting shadows on the window sill;

They speak to you with voices who've been
People you've neither met nor seen.

Softly, you speak to the television set.
Smell mowed lawns on the wind.  Rest.