Leaps to Fly

                                              I am so deeply in love
                                              with the sky.
                                              How she shocks my small circle eye!
                                              Words shrink, shrivel, and pale,
                                              to great Sky's splendiferous scale.
                                              Launch-lifted, my heart leaps to fly
                                              into colors and swishpers and sighs,
                                              Soaring vistas, mist-vapors, and snow,
                                              into mountains and thunders I go!
                                              Through sculptures of sugar-cream fluff,
                                              through the heavens' sweet cottony stuff.
                                              A landscape, a skyscape, impossibly wide!
                                              The sky-song is calling. I'm going outside...

                                              Good morning, my dark sky, blackened in tar,
                                              God's simple signature: one twinkling star.

Magic Laughter

Bubbling, fizzling,

Like sparkling water-foam, dancing

on beach sand.

Like bird-giggles,

Like the voices of children,

Cresting waves, in deep-surge or splashing delight.

Thank you for turns and tricks

and tickle-toons, this

Carbonated magic: laughter.

                                          In the Clouds
                                          (to Meet the Lord)

                                  Ah HA!
                                  This is why I love the clouds...
                                       (stop laughing and crying long enough
                                       to breathe and say)
                                  Lord, this is why I love the clouds:
                                    Because:
                                    In cloud-crinkle pages
                                    I am called to remember...
                                    When the cloud-trumpet calls
                                    We will rise and
                                    meet You in the air,
                                    In the fleecy-golden white.
                                    Forever.

"And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus shall we always be with the Lord."   I Thessalonians 4:17

Holy Spirit

Roaring Whisper

Earthquake flutter

a Feather's breeze, hurling mountains to the sea!

Now, now,

pierce my pleasures

with your Translucent Destiny.

                                           
                                      "Come to us
                             in the Season of Peaches."

                                              The call was clear and, like swallows,
                                              We flew off to California,
                                              tired and searching for open light.

                                              Into the branches probed our searching fingers,
                                              Until touching the fuzz on the orb, and
                                              Tasting the first fresh seasonal peach -- in full glory.

                                              Then, dribble on my chin,
                                              I could smile again.

This is square-block streets and and square-frame windows going ever-up, buildings consuming the sky. Horns, sirens, horns, and voices in the concrete labyrinth. Rush of rubber on rock, screech n' crunch of pig-squealing brakes and millions of millions of millions of people, peopling the sidewalks (so that) you push through them, jostling, jumbling, weave-swerving as if grope-swimming against a tidal sea.

This is Morgan Freeman in wax, three stories of Toys R Us with a ferris wheel inside or walls and walls and walls of Hot Wheels stacked up to the ceiling, only steps from the lingering presence of a horrific dinosaur, clawing at Superman who doesn't notice, his arms stretched backwards to stop the collision of an on-rushing eighteen-wheel truck.

This is New York City, where youth-faced filmmakers will gather to screen their movie-works and reach for the stars. 

This is the top of my sky-scraper moments, when, in the darkened bus, sludging through non-moving traffic, Benjamin said, "I'm glad you came with me."

     THE COOL SIDE

In Summer’s warmy midnights,

In the whispers of a meager fan,

I turn     in sleep     flip-flop like a

                                                           pancake on the cooktop.

                             Or when my neck goes

                             Moist and soppy,

                             Enough to umber out of sleep

                             And lay there like a fish on a plank.

                                                         I pull my secret maneuver

                                                         And flip the warm pillow

                                                                                (that hot armadillo)

                                                         To the underside of the pillow,

                                                                                (this cooling willow)

                                                         And Ahh…

                                                         down into sleep again.

Acrobat Daredevil Grasshoppers

LIVE

In My Backyard!

From nowhere – from anywhere

They leap!

Flung at incredible speed

To bash into brick,

Slam into wall!

Bounce off my chest and

Hurl their leggy structures

Across the grass or into the bushes.

And this entertainment is FREE!

SPROINGG!   CRASH!

THUNK.

CLACKETY-BAMM!

SWIDDLE and FLOOSH!

Just yesterday, as I found me mowing and moving,

A super-circus grasshopper

Sir Sidney Springmoon (I believe),

Sss-popped up

And

Gripped to the red metal showfloor,

(the hot cowl that covers the blade)

And there he paused, poised…

While

I mowed forward, watching him.

And fearlessly, Sir Sidney shot skyward!

In a triple-backflip spin-around leap,

He sailed through sunshine, grinning up at me,

Then to glance off a sunny rock

And swish into a flowerbed!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is

Top-notch Arachnid Entertainment!

Happy, hoppy, hooplah…

LIVE!

In my backyard.

     The Speaking Sky

        (Psalm 19:1-3)

The heavens declare,

like A voice everywhere

I look up: You are there,

So all Heaven declares.

The clouds have a voice:

The clouds showed me:

                                 A patch of blue.

An opening of paper-torn grace,

Bright blue shining through

downy fluff-cotton white:

“This stormish between us will soon take flight.”

Or Friday, driving home,

Huge billows, sky pillows

Great witnesses or this

All-everywhere audience, applauding

in Smeared glazes of swish

Or silver-white broccoli bushes

Flowering, towering, all across the up,

Speaking to me a deeply-thundering

                       CONFIDENCE,

Huge and silent in my chest:

Im-pressing, In-fusing,

In-breathing,

In-spiriting

A tender-boomy unmeasurable

Orchestral whisp:

                                    The music of Christ, hymning, humming,

                                    Another song of trust and bubbling,

                                    Sweetly, in the laughter of children.

The heavens declare!

Hear their voice everywhere.

You will always be there,

So the heavens declare.

                    Good Night, Fender

                         I'm so sorry
                               so sorry,
                         You finally fell apart
                         with no one to reassemble you.

                         The Genie who granted wishes,
                         Brought giggles, snorts and laugh-bursts,
                         Packed his bag and this time, really left the lamp.
                         Not wearing his tropical shirt.
                         Never to return to Neverland.

                         Apparently, the day took hold and,
                         in a non-comic twist,
                         The day seized you.

                         After all the ups you delivered,
                         the downers took you down.
                         Grounding Peter, dousing Doubtfire, closing Mork
                         and Outmoding Fender
                         who tumbles down the hill
                         rolling through Walt Whitman's leaves of grass.

                         Your funny funnies will never leave, glad and sadly so,
                         ...that frowny-smile, the jewel-blue sparkle in your eyes,
                         ...that voice, those voices, all three million of them, will
                         continue, a flicker-flame, happy-sad, in a Genie-less world.

                         and I think, I think you would want us to turn forward
                         and
                         keep laughing.

                            I find you this morning
                            In the swirling
                            Slosh-around
                            Brushwork.

                            In the strokes you always and never intend,
                            Your whimsical touch-noodlings, arm-sweeps,
                                                     glue-gloppers and hand-wiggles.

                            Wrapped-around, Pushing in, Swipe to left
                            Jamming right, Curled around and up and down
                            and rolling in the colors, and then
                            splash-landing on the canvas.

                            Or a careful application, a calculated jab
                            Maybe here, or over there, or, surprise!:
                            A large orbiting gesture, slung 'round and dotted with a dabble-point.

                            Or the layers of paintings under paintings under paintings,
                            Like history, often covered with a glaze, often glowing to the surface.

                            I miss our laughing--turning--plucking--playing--strumming--praying--                                                           jump-around--windy dances.

                            And yet, on this sun-dappled Saturday morning, Avery,
                            I find you.
                            Smiling,
                            In the brushwork.

                                    RECENT RIGHTING


                                           Rough it in,
                                                 Punch it up,
                                                      Knock it out.

                                           This is writing.




                        Nevertheless,
                        Alwaysthemore.

                        Found me in my sullen troll-cave
                        lighting a candle that light-spoded like
                        a symphony-sun.

                        Illuminating tattered questions: 
                                                                  Why trade the mirror for the window?
                                                                  Embrace a fear to find a vapor?
                                                                  Dwell upon shadows rather than reality?

                        And now I remember, how often I forget:

                        Always the more.
                        Never the less.

Big Sky

Blue between the billowing

Cotton-torn pillows,

Oh so white-white in the

Big

Big Sky

Under such an everywhere,

Dwarfing my anti-berry car machine,

As I titter along, miniscule, under the

Big Big

 Big Sky.

                                             



                                  Stop motion,
                                             Go motion.
                                             Drop by drop
                                             You paint an ocean.

                                             Many years later,
                                             What did you prove?
                                             A lifetime spent dripping drops
                                             Can make an ocean move.

                                             So from Gumby to Goliath to Gromit,
                                             My friends live by gentle jerks.
                                             Smiles, laughter and applausing proves
                                             That animation works!