On a night like tonight
I may put the crickets to bed
And enjoy the moon by myself 
And tomorrow
Who else saw its performance?
I would be in good company

Thus far
She wanders too
Our paths, heavier with time
Fall together into
A perfect moment gives birth to more like it
Each one making us

We are blessed with more of each other
Than we we know how to handle
And so we trust
What we don’t know is always plenty
And what we have known has been satisfied
I’ll get lost with you, still
Walking beyond what we remembered discovering

Now here, again at the homes of our children
Mapping out our reach like a constellation
We trace our way back home
They’ve grown even further into time
But I am,
Here with you

Stay in my resting thoughts
And come
I have swept for you, now open the windows
And kiss me all over!

I have been lonely often
and have never been too good at it
I have not betrayed my heart 
Or made believe love 
Though I do believe

On quiet nights I have seen a coyote
I have chased owls and been
breathless
I heard one screech and stood under its tree
My world rotated
Watching it rage like a woman and then fly away

But to love well is to be unafraid 
So I learn to trust 
Which is harder than to wait
For all will expire 
But not all will trust 

By choice or by force I have submitted
To sleep and to mystery
First carried beyond conscious direction
And then at the border town of an abyss or an eternity
I am not sure which

The comings and goings of my wakefulness collected without bias
All things open and laid bare
My attention has been completely stolen here
To answer for me
I pray to be among the honest, not betrayed by himself
Trusting as a man in love
Gone slack with his eyes closed
Studied and subject to the searching of another

Awake I have walked in the direction of my sight
My world marked by a horizon
What I have known of heaven extending downward to earth
Resting on canopy and then slowly filtering through
To seek the low points of my landscape
Finding equilibrium in places yet to be found
Yet to be tread
Yet to be under stood

Asleep again I face the infinite one day older
May my ignorance not be counted against me
May the Lord of my labor
Be the God of my rest
That I might be nurtured here
For a while in a place I do not yet belong
That I may sleep deeply
Enjoying the rest of the faithful
Like a man on his back
Facing heaven upright

The Lord God is my peace
In Him all secrets are known
To give what might take to a man
And bring new life

So I find quietness
Where I left it
And fall on it like a made bed
In my undoing
He rebuilds
In my patience
He draws near
Supporting each tired step I must take

It has always been more than enough
And I am satisfied

The sun sinks and I go home
In time
Before the cold awkward goodbye

It will rise tomorrow and I so will I
To return
To rest in its warmth
And see by it’s light
To offer my sweat
To the shade of its growth
And the shadow I cast

All the stars are still there
Left on for a night with no moon
But I’ll wait for the sun

My dissatisfaction has made my contentment its pupil
But when I dream
I find a better teacher

Grasping is best done with the heart
And poems, when read aloud,
Become like forgotten memories
Now found again

Behold endless inspiration
Blessed be the cleansing
Grace of nature
The entire weight of the ocean
And the clouds spread out like oil
The most delicate of smiles
Comes up from the sea
To crest and break across the woman
In constant rain

The journal is the canvas of a spirit, maybe.
And we cast spells like brush strokes
And find satisfaction in those pleasing lines
Which most approximate the truths not still too great for us.

All else remains out of reach, but not out of sight,
Unthinkable, but not out of mind
And odd sounds and smells fill all the stranger gaps in between
what we have not yet been able to utter
And we return to the words of our Lord
Again, hungry to participate
And read aloud

"Our Father,
Who art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy Kingdom come
Thy Will be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil"

Lord
Let me not be asleep to the magic of life,
Spellbound in the dreams of my own prophecies