Category: Poetry

Title Sequence

[ ]

Leave

space

for silence.

Leave it for

a renewed faith in us.

Leave space for your
notions to slowly wither;

to shrivel up into themselves
like the leaves
of a long-neglected plant.

The truth, at least as I
understand it, is that nothing
I create can be destroyed,
and all I destroy reappears.

This metaphysical physical conundrum
isn’t reincarnation, exactly.
But it does mean that what was me
lives on to become someone else,
just as I am the result
of my ancestors, both known
and unknown.

More: It means that every atom
belonging to me as good belongs to you,
which is something Uncle Walt knew
way back in 1855. What did he mean?
The word “atom” appeared long before Walt,
but our modern understanding
of magical miniatures was in its infancy
when Walt decided we shared
our mystical star stuff.

I guess there have always been seers.
People whose eyes gazed upon
the same reality as mine do now,
and yet saw deeper into the ones
and zeroes of the breath breathed
into Adam or out from Brahma.
Where I see a river they saw
a river of stars, flowing into the infinite,
reflected again and again in each nexus
of Indra’s incomprehensible net.
A web with no weaver, no spider,
but no less real for its unreality.
At each nexus a jewel;
in each jewel a universe.

Sing me a song of this web.
Sing me the melody of a miracle.
Sing it into the silence
for which space was left.
Sing it over the sound
of the rushing water.
The song is a vibration –
waves of sound across the ocean
that separates me from you,
you from the infinite.
An ocean found on no map.
An ocean that disappears
the moment we attempt
to set sail upon it.
No boat ever built
can conquer this trackless expanse,
this gulf that collapses to the head of a pin.
Look and see the angels,
robes whirling in the sun,
as they dance to the silence,
the unrelenting, comforting silence
that falls as you look into the mirror
and see my face looking back.
Somehow we’ve always known.
When I open my mouth
your voice emerges
in silence
for which space was left.

/ / /

1 November 2025
Charlottesville VA

The stanzas in this poem follow the Fibonacci sequence, with the word count of each stanza following the sequence, starting from the null set in the first line.

Shoe-Hole Sailor

Jimmy Murphy is a shoe-hole sailor.
He travels the world from heel to toe.
You see all kinds of things in the shoe-hole.
At least you do if you know how to look.
Jimmy has a good pair of eyes on him.
Eyes sharpened from a lifetime of sailing.
He can spot a goshawk lacing the clouds
that to you or me would just be a speck.
Jimmy likes a drink, but never in the hole.
He’s too cautious a shoe man for that.
And if you’ve got a deck of cards to hand,
Jimmy will give you a game of gin rummy.
It’s not a bad life, this sailing the shoe-hole.
You don’t make much money, but you see a lot.

/ / /

29 October 2025
Charlottesville VA

the teacher & the doctor
for Abby & Erik-Stephane

to love deeply
is to step beyond the wall
that could protect you
choosing instead to be a shield
for those who have no wall

to love deeply
is to listen, to speak,
to shout, to scream
for those who are not voiceless
but ignored

to love deeply
is to hold each life
in a sacred grasp
to feel the heartbeat
as it harmonizes with your own

to love deeply
is to do all this
when your own future is unclear
to trust in one another
to light the way

/ / /

8 October 2025
Charlottesville VA