Haven

Find yourself a garden
or a courtyard.
Wall yourself in.

If these are not available
try a sunroom
or an attic.

This is not a place
to eat or to sleep;
this is a place
to muse and to mutter.

Don't tell anyone where you are going.

Kidnap yourself.
Hold yourself hostage.
Pay a king's ransom
for your return.


In Passing

She stands in the archway.
There is something arch
in the way she stands.

If I stop, there is no telling....
I tell myself not to stop.

She winks as I pass.
I pass her in a wink.

But after I pass, a glow sticks to me.
I am stuck in this afterglow.

I have virtually no regret.
Just once I would like, regretfully,
to have no virtue.

Sanctum

To be silent
with the heart wide open; listening.
This passive search; this unarmed hunt.
Alone with the Beloved; your darkness, His light --
a love-friction igniting the beauty flame,
visible only to the burned.
To love both the dark and the light,
knowing the gift will come, black wrapping
recognizeable by the luminous fingerprints.