Flotsam

Like a ghost, I rose in the water and the sea turned me upside down. I felt so insubstantial that the tumbling water seemed to run through me, while the waves breaking above my head brought me inevitably to shore. Carried by the swell, I lay among the worn beach boulders. The push and pull of tide rocked me, like a baby, back to sleep. I resisted and stared at the high mackerel sky, at the folded clouds where the sun was hiding.

Inheritance

Something hides

Between the belly and the heart,

A low sensation thrust

Under the sternum

Like life or death

Or compromise.

Uncle Ronnie

Uncle Ronnie cut the last stones.

Alone on the rock, the last mason,

He put a year under his chisel

Until the work was done.

Word Formation

Wind under sky

With no shape
Blows in tomorrow's dust
An advance of rain.

Words cannot frame

The scant origin of cloud.

Nor moisture turn sense

Into utterance.

Earthbound

What I write

In the pages of this place

As if on the walls of a prison

Is simply a poem

Or an epitaph.