Maybe it’s fire
that sets you 
to boil like 
some gnome deep 
inside the cauldron 
that you are 
chucking logs into 
raising your temperature 
until at last 
you boil over 
or perhaps its 
claws that squeeze 
cracking the shell 
where inside lays
the meat you 
that then flies 
in all directions 
I just want 
me to be 
water and hands
to you dousing 
and piecing together 
the boiled over 
and broken you 

As the bloom
is to spring 
and the flake 
is to winter 
and the leaf
is to wind
so is new
my very hope 
new is change 
and it’s now 
for new and
now and change 
simply tells me 
that the old 
is now over 

When what was
need becomes want 
because you accepted 
to take on
the frequently painful 
task of facing 
personal fears and 
insecurities about insufficiencies 
one quickly identifies 
those same missing 
in others and 
what once were 
green flags turn
red and yellow 
well yellow you 
become cautioning others 
of your strength 

A bedroom door 
and light that
changes from yellow 
to blue to
white like flashlights 
and lanterns in
tents long ago 
but now this 
door lacks the 
shadows of my 
once knew long 
forgotten lost crazy
carefree teenage years 

Coffee’s up
I holler 
as I
hear your 
now familiar 
shuffle of
feet floor
and the 
gathering of 
clothes like 
workers in
fields looking 
for rice
and then 
a ghost 
barefoot and 
barely human 
reaching for 
the cup 
that contains 
its soul 
bringing grace 
back to 
the dead