the absence of light

It's like this: I can't see the moon from my window 

But I know she's there in the glow coming in slits from between the blinds

And the shadows cast long and lonely across the gray street

I remember other streets

And how it felt from that side of the window pane

Color bled out in night

Cold bled from my bones

My toes ached on those nights

Tonight they are covered in a smothering of soft blankets and slanted moonlight

Tonight full and cold and on the wrong side of the window and out of sight

She still draws on the part of me

That wants to howl 

My cold and lonely allegiance to her

Until nothing is left in my lungs but frozen air and nothing

Left in my heart but the memory of those lonely streets

And nothing left in my bed but my body, spent and asleep at last

Our wife: the moon

 If only I could remember the shape of the house that used to keep me warm

The walls that blocked the cold and the roof

Which asked the stars, "Could you pipe down and let them sleep?"

If only I could remember the way we lay in piles of blankets and body heat

Fingers on my skin

One window facing east, reminding me of the day to come

One west to remind me of the night still ahead

And one south so the moon could wink at me

As only she knew how we loved within those walls. 

Ethan Frome

I'm in love with the steep roofs of these cold New England houses

Their angle of bank, designed with a cool eye to the sky

Think of the snow

Soft and silent

Piling on the streets but not the rooftops

I'm in love with the way a storm sweeps in and settles down like an old flame

For Keyra's Birthday

 To build a life with you

To take all your bowls 

And all my bowls 

And figure out how they nest inside each other

Inside the kitchen cabinet that's a little too small

And if (when) a bowl breaks

dropped by a careless hand (probably mine) 

Onto a distant floor

We will patch it together with band aids and kisses and say

"This is something we have built"

Flirtationship of the poodles

 My neighbors have two black poodles 

Hopping about in their high fenced yard

Is this what it means to love?

Love poem for the non-monogamous

My love is not a bird trapped in the cage of your fingers

My love is not a patient record of each of the starts in the night sky

My love is a wilder thing then this

My love is a lion's hunger as it devours another living thing

My love is the sound of music over a car engine loud and late

My love is the pancakes I made and then compost last Sunday

Because I love to dream and I can let a bad thing go when I must

My friend Robin told me they want to build the wood and hope foundation of love 

From the ground up, add walls and a roof

But I tire of square shapes

My love is a language, taken, not forgotten

My love is the language of smells, I know it as I breathe but I don't have the words

My love is the language of a baby: new, full of potential, and utterly meaningless

My love speaks and I take pause and then 

I shout what I hear to anyone who will listen because to be known, 

For just a moment, is beautiful

My love is the wind and it is infinitive and powerful and chaotic and with time 

It moves mountains

found poem

As found in the "Armenian kids get secret Santa" of the Local First: Your Weekly Guide to Shopping

Send children on her ancestral quest.

Is there matter?

Recieve gifts amid winter.

Drive to children and recieve hundreds.

Leave everything behind at second snow.

Its cold after decades.

Over to home.