life: acoustic & amplified

you slipping through

It’s a little bit
true that the
hole in my jacket
pocket
the breast pocket
yeah all relaxed
has a hole &
pens keep
slipping through
one’s in the lining
but this one
perched
now it’s a writing
bird
silly black out there
wants to
tell its
song. Miguel’s
book was
in the air &
I was on
a train
my feet are cold
and you wouldn’t
be in the
air so
long it doesn’t happen
like this
there’s no climate
in a plane
and I was in one
but not on
earth
my mother
is gone
each thing I do
is a little
bit wrong. I’m willing
to apologize
but they never
help it’s
just pointing
out the hole
& people
forget but I
won’t forget
you

❤

A Little Bit by Eileen Myles

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;
everything blooms coldly.

I expect you. I thought one night it was you
at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,

you in a shiver of light, but each time
leaves in wind revealed themselves,

the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak.
We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove.

In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires
over which young men and women leapt.

June efforts quietly.
I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall

so even if spring continues to disappoint
we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.

I have new gloves and a new hoe.
I practice eulogies. He was a hawk

with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs
of a salamander crossing the old pony post road.

Yours is the name the leaves chatter
at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

Dear One Absent This Long While by Lisa Olstein

Last night I was a child again
in Raleigh. And the
Dorich boys were on the roof
and my sister was
waiting behind the Monopoly
board and it was summer
and the heat was like
a separate personality and
dogs wandered here and
there unhindered by fences or
leashes and I could see
how my future spread out be-
fore me like a relief map
without relief and I only wanted
to fit in again, to find
my family intact, Scamp still
alive and my father,
regal in his recliner, an
ashtray full of cigarettes
near him and I wanted to say,
Father, stop now, stop please,
let this not be dream. Let it
be true that I am a child again
in Raleigh, under the
finest sun anyone had ever seen,
never to be seen again.

❤

Last Night I was a Child Again in Raleigh by Corey Mesler

I walk through the raspy voices of the fallen leaves

shuffle through the playlist of your memory

rifle through suitcases of past days

stepping on milestones strategically placed 

arriving at this moments’ frigid windchill 

to stand on the sandy shore

of blue skied tomorrows chloroformed dreams

full of next choices

to do

to be 

to want

to know

I turn toward the day, falling down with such grace

the brilliant colors of the future before me

the promise of love written all across the horizon

life, with all its beauty, sings my name softly

a lullaby, like no other,

sleep, child, all is well

you are love

you are loved

❤

Amy Lloyd

I sit, giving my weight to the chair.
I breathe. I wait. I behold.
The tree exercises patience,
lets go a leaf, pauses,
lets go a leaf.
I can’t see it
but the horizon embraces me.
The hills pass it on.
The ground abides.
Planets, too.
God unhurries, unworries.
A depth opens.
Presence wells up.
I have passed
out of the world of adjectives.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net