Wild Things in the Night




The committee of roosters gathers
at my ankles, the night
drifts off like a loose horse.

In my ears the coyotes' laddered song
still lingers. Wild open throated.
A language not so strange
awakens the heart,

gleefully, from a simple dream.

I wake with the sun,
the field is empty.

I look down into the petal of my hand,
and in between the fingers,
one tuft of gold-gray fur remains.





c2011 T.L.Stokes (all rights reserved)

Standing Under the Blue Bridge
by T.L. Stokes





If you must take me away
in the blue heron's gray coat.

He always comes above me,
surprisingly uninvited,

makes my loneliness jump and quiver
to see him again.

He is my totem I never asked for,
never was assigned.

I just know with glory
and a certainty

he is my great, great grandfather,

he is a piece of God,

he is the inside lid of the omen-maker.

When he claps
those great bridges together,

I am dead,

I am born.

If you must, take me away
this way,

when evening is still virgin and silent.






first published in Snow Monkey,
by Ravena Press

c2011 T.L. Stokes (all rights reserved)

Japan/my double vision

I wake up with Japan
like a window before me.
Rain from our sky
hangs on the tree's
goblet limbs
captured and still.
The unconfused
and spacious air
in Seattle grows darker
and more gray.
We are joined by waves.

I wake up with Japan
rising before me
her patchwork timber and steel
layered so it blocks the sky
and now a string of rescuers
crisscross becoming smaller
and smaller in the dark artwork
of what is left.

I wake up with Japan
and the rest of the world
reach their hands out
groaning and we can't stop
speaking of the day the earth
broke,
and how the heart
of your island
feels heavier
as the days pass
like a weary sun
passing the frightened moon.

I wake up with Japan
as each day she opens her eyes
remembering this isn't a dream.
I am hungry for photographs
to bring me closer,
to bridge the water,
to stand closer,
to do something.

I am hungry to dig my hands
down deep and pull something alive
up, anything, anything at all.

I wake up with Japan
and see as if on transparent silk
two worlds, transposed one upon
the other.

And what I touch here
I touch there.

Thus I hold a part of her fissured earth
and greet compassion, pouring
like the endless waters,
the entire atmosphere
gathering around the blue sphere
tilting slightly off center,
spinning, spinning,

and this red pain in my heart
and yours begins to heal
what was flung open
and washed,

and surprisingly,
somehow meticulously
will sew every last
lost thread together.

I wake up with Japan
typing the song as it comes
to me. Sky deepens out the window
and thunder shouts
in her mysterious
tongues.





c2011 TLStokes/Floodwaterphotography (all rights reserved)