Tiptoe

I’ve lost myself in a wilderness

Not entirely of 

My own making though 

It does have roots in 

My sloth, laziness I guess,

My unwillingness

To push through agitations that rose up,

Rise up, burble up,

Fragments I seem unwilling to 

Lasso and beat into these barren, 

Unkempt and 

Fallow fields, these caverns

Missing 

Some chance to join the 

Rooted wilderness 

I love beyond expressing

But I’m lost to that rich, spare landscape

In these last unpresent months. 

Year. Years. I do not know. 

If I want to be kind to myself I say

That I’ve been marinating

Perhaps

Perhaps not

Perhaps wishes, lies, dreams, truths and 

Gazing across landscapes, into skies, 

Stirring ancient questions 

Are nothing more than indulgences

But I wish to find a fulcrum

I have been unable to put 

Plea and deep heart into a universe 

I no longer understand, 

If in fact I ever did, save now and then in 

Some infinitesimal starry, 

Momentary nexus that comes along 

Brushed when precious worlds 

Collapse together 

Still, my affair with words and spaces, 

Emptiness, color, change, the shapes

Of sound and love 

Float stymied and unmoored

In ordinary, endless days.

I do not know if she, I, I guess, can return; 

I’m not hoping 

For any continuity 

I am just being in some way brave

Admitting that if I cannot write 

I cannot imagine how I’ll breathe. 

In the fragile, loamy new days 

Portending spring, I try to take 

Some deeper breaths

I’ve been here in this 

Hilly hallowed hollow before.

Far away, now, I dare to feel 

The ringing bells.