Category Archives: poem

POEM: Frozen Waterfall [Sonnet]

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The world stands like a frozen waterfall,
a river paralyzed, impossibly.
And silence replaces its rushing call.
In stillness, it spurns gabbling audibly.

How can a cataract become so hush,
its business being unceasing motion,
spending its days, constantly in a rush,
dispatching raindrops back to the ocean?

Yet, now it's a tower - still as a stone -
that looms like it's never known transience.
Its icy curtain, hard as a shinbone,
offers a wholly different ambience.

I can see its beauty, but am still sad,
thinking the falls should be beyond the fads.

POEM: Geologic Time

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The boulders' slothful migration
inched them down the hillside.
They moved so slow you'd never know
they were in leaden landslide.

POEM: Enough is Enough

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The question asked:

"Am I enough?"

Which begs the questions:
-enough for whom?
-enough for what?

What would it mean
to not be enough?

The Economist in me
says no one ever
acknowledges when 
enough is enough.

[That's what we are
taught as baby Economists:
that the fundamental 
condition of human existence
is that people's 
wants are endless,
but resources are limited.]

In yoga, we have
Santosha & Tapas
[contentment & discipline,]
which seemed at odds 
to me for a long time --
until I considered 
that being happy 
with who one is 
is only in conflict 
with efforts to be
a better version
of oneself
if one makes some
pretty f***ed up
assumptions. 

I've been told,
on occasion,
that I'm "too much."

I don't know whether
this is better, worse,
or morally equivalent to 
being not enough.

POEM: Evergreens

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Evergreens line the trail,
transporting me to a place --
higher and harder --
where one might expect trees
that refuse to yield for seasons.

POEM: Downstream Movement

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everything is one thing.
the way we are rivers.
and all things are nothing;
as takers are givers.

i'm flow-er and flow-ee --
twisting as I'm drifting,
not fancy or showy 
nor highly uplifting.

just a leaf on a stream,
bumping into others,
gliding through a fond dream
with sisters and brothers.

Milky Glow Tanka

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boulder churned
water sloshes to mist,
sunlit white --
its milky glow rounds
the gentle riverbend

POEM: Burning too Hot

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The festive fires were burning hot,
too hot for their own good.
They melted through the rocky ground
just feet from where I stood.

I stepped back, wondering whether
the fire would burn right through
the planet to the molten core 
making a jet-like flue

to push the planet from its path
out toward somewhere strange,
and by the time the fire 'd frozen
we'd be beyond home range.

Then I realized that it was I
who burned far too fiercely,
and all this from my febrile mind 
was just thinking weirdly.

POEM: Choices, Choices, or Not

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arches echo ahead,
stretching to the end of time

left into the labyrinth,
right to the blinding sun

it's a land of stark contrasts
on one side, great adventure
but great peril

on the other, painful monotony
of well-lit spaces

then there's straight ahead:
a ceaseless repetition of today
throughout all your tomorrows

POEM: Pale Skies

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bleached in bright sunshine --
thin, wispy white clouds
are barely seen 
amid the washed out skies

some summer day -- 
sending one running 
for sunglasses
to avoid a blinding headache

it seems the world 
might fade into a 
tabula rasa, or
blanch anemically