These bees/flit and flight/do what they do/make life go on/while I sit on this bench considering the poetic possibilities/of nausea and what follows/vomit rhymes with comet you know/my attention keeps/unsurprisingly slipping/too soon/the flowers and the bees’ buzz and the bench and the pretty day/Sing me a lost lullaby/where toxins don’t need expelling/and the border of death and life recede/except it won’t/and the body writhing sweating expelling/shudders and suffers to life/it is its desperate insistence on living/that makes us sick/unlovely yet Noble I think/perhaps more so/at least equal/in my eyes/to bees/and flowers/this will to life

There is something Sacred/about the pilgrimage of friendship/that allows us to swim in different directions/ponds/pools/puddles/rushing falls/of salty tears/and be in God’s same liquid eye

Float in enough for /a while/find in enough/that blessed sufficiency/I fondly name/just/just enough/breath/hope/endurance/courage/faith/float there/right there/until God troubles/that water

So much to pray/I call on angels/harbingers of divine love and care/know you will be present with all who need/this night/this day/and ever more

Standing guard over portals/of life and more life/I am as fierce/as the sun/I laugh as fierceness migrates/my friends circle the astral sphere/I cup the bowl of earth/with all my might

Some travel/though it only becomes a sacred journey/when we realize/we will all be changed/the traveling with divinity/Never cycles in our control/we will/all will change/below us/around us/inside us/this sickness is and always was unto death/and into the bowels of life/we exhaust these living/down to the husks/put on the foam slippers/and walk and ride/ of the companions I don’t get to choose/I choose God/over/and over/every breath/every single step/I commit my spirit/into hands that hold/and which death/may never part

Marigold saffron prayers/drenched in sunlight/ever call me to my knees/to my hopes/for sweet tomorrows/for tides of sorrow/to subtly wane/for the light of sun and star and moon/to carry us on

I have seen this flower on many continents/ child of the tropics/bloom/bloom in all your beauty/child of the tropics/love/love with all your heat/child of the tropics/shine/shine with every understanding/live/though rain must fall

Place of sorrow and pain/also comfort/also freedom/fly/like a bird/in the wide/wide/sky

One rose/gracing the garden/a final rose of summer/in a place of final journeys/beginnings and endings/one sweet eternal rose/to say until then