Let There Be

The page stares back at me
its emptiness more presence 
than absence.

The pen hesitates—
or maybe it’s just waiting for me.
An occasional flicker of
something that dissolves 
when I look too closely.

Words in my mind,
scatter like dust,
like sand in the wind.

I can’t see.
I press harder,
demanding sense,
demanding beauty,
demanding anything to fill the space.

Perhaps the struggle
is the poem itself. 
It will not be forced.

I’m left with the weight of trying,
the ache of creation,
the intense insistence
that something will emerge,
even if it doesn’t.

Shiva

Sitting here together,
we settle in,
the air warm 
with something unspoken.
No rush here, 
no need to 
fill the spaces—
words wander, in 
their own time.

Your calm voice, 
a steady thread,
weaving new stories.

The kettle sings-
these warm cups,
like offering gifts.

We drink slowly,
each sip, a
silent shared vow.

No rituals here,
only the ease 
of your company,

Silence rests like
it’s always belonged.
When it’s time
to move on
there’s no leaving,
only this stillness,
this quiet tether—
a true friendship 
steeped in time.

Invitation

Sunrise,
casting its reach
on icy puddles, 
shimmering,
fractured mirrors, catching
a thousand rays of gold.

This brick wall, 
tired and weathered,
glowing, is a canvas painted
rusty amber and rainbow corn shades,
its cracks holding light, secrets
whispered but not lost.

A shaft of sunlight slips
between bare branches,
illuminating a frost-laden spiderweb
stitched across a fairie window,
once invisible, now gleaming,
momentarily precious.

Shadows play longer,
stretching thin across the ground
as if reaching for something
they’ll never quite hold.

On days like this,
a quiet alchemy of cold and fire,
the world glows, radiant, 
inviting you to notice.

Arrival and Departure

Brought in screaming
to a sterile room, harsh with fluorescent light,
no map, no compass, no stars—
each of us arrive.

Weaned from the mother,
we reach—
for the bottle of milk, sweet and pure,
then soda, fizzed with false joy,
then whiskey, heavy with regret,
then pills, silent as snow.

Taken out screaming
to a shadowed box, chilled by the weight of earth,
no map, no compass, no stars—
we vanish,
contextless as the wind.

Pandemic

Days roll into days,
the thread of time unraveling,
and hazy grey pervades all things—
the sky, the ground, and the hearts of those who once carried laughter like lanterns.

Sanctified and desecrated,
the sacred and the profane blur
beneath this veil of grief.
Even sunlight dims,
its brilliance muted,
as if afraid to intrude
upon the solemnity of despair.

Nothing is immune.
Not the towering pines once swaying freely
nor the rivers that carried hope
in their timeless currents.
The world breathes out sorrow,
a fog from deep within,
wrapping every corner in a quiet ache.

Yet, beneath this blanket of sadness,
something stirs—a pulse, faint but steady,
a whisper that reminds us
that even in the haze,
the earth turns.

December Quiet

The air smells of frost and woodsmoke,
and the sky is a pale, aching gray.
Morning drifts in slowly,
like a stranger unsure of the room.

Walking through the silent trees,
their branches stripped bare—
no leaves to catch the weight of the wind,
no words to ease its passing.

Light spills from distant windows,
but it doesn’t reach this place.
Only the sound of shoes on concrete,
and the creak of a season folding in on itself.

There are no songs here,
no laughter carried through the air.
Just the steady rhythm of my breath,
and the waiting silence of December.