Autumn's Finch

Morning’s clarinet of feathers
over blunt autumn cold

Singing finch
scurry branch to branch

Southeastern’s feeble flame
burns November’s thin wick

In the air
blue ice whistles

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from my 6th book-length manuscript
©dah / dahlusion 2014, 2015 all rights reserved

"Autumn’s Finch" was first published in
'The Filid Anthology'

Sound

The spirituality of sound
of a gong
of a loon
the impossible grieving
of mourning doves
the cracking of ice
the drone of urban streets
trucks rumbling
over wooden bridges
a cat’s purr

There’s a need to hold sound
to feel its pulsation
to see colors of sound
or to hear the sun mounting
the sky or
the bloodless and wicked
sound of lightning

Ah, the overflowing tapestry
of sounds
with their invisible force
or the unconscious sounds
of the dead
diffused and distant
or the meandering of echoes 

the broadcast, the transmission
the longwinded sermons 
the cry of a newborn
the utterance, the announcement
a city’s cacophony, the uproar
the dissonant chord
the rhetoric of schizophrenics
or Purple Passages of Deep Purple
psychedelic or progressive sounds

Om, a sound of guidance
the chant, the mantra, the moan
of orgasms, the gasp, the scream
the subtleness of whispers  

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from my 6th book-length ms. 
©dah / dahlusion 2015 all rights reserved

"Sound" was first published in 'Chicago Record Magazine'

Fallen Sea Star

The chilly North Pacific:

we build a fire for the moths,

a lamplight. Their wings, angry

with flames. Sky: dim and small.

In your standing stillness, you are

an old clock

that has run out of chimes.

The small hours of the past,

a fossil, a nerve. I hand you a flask.

You say: ‘August is dying.

The stones are cold.’ In your hand,

a dead sea star. Summer bronze

burned into your skin. Your eyes,

moist black pearls.

Along the horizon, dark fog

is an oil slick floating against the sky’s

gray wall. Your silhouette, solitude,

the wind’s nimble stitching of your hair.

You say: ‘Memories are wounds

infected with melancholy,

that push the past deeper into ruins.’

—the old houses sold, the Village

demolished. To dust. 

You ask: ‘Why did you leave?’

I answer: ‘There is nothing left

to remind me to remember.

After the bricks fell and shattered,

the villagers became anxious.’

You reply: ‘Trepidation is God’s

offering. Listen! There’s no rush

to reach the future’ — a turnpike

of unraveled lives, sun-bleached ghosts,

pale, tired.

All night long moths fly into the light,

into the stars, the flames. The wind stirs

their powdery ashes.

Body against body,

there is deep silence between us.

The waves break. The future rolls in,

disconnects the past.

The sea star falls from your hand.

Make a wish.

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from 'The Translator' ©dah 2015

"Fallen Sea Star " was first published in
'Deep Tissue Magazine'