The Moya View

Tag: life

  • After the Cure

    After the Cure

    I came back and I could see through the pane it had fallen, this leaning tree that grew pridefully close to the house,roots torn from earth in the winds.When all others died, it had survived the heat and blight, all the cold night winds, but not my separation, cure, return. I cried for its sorrow…

  • The Blind Man’s Spot

    The Blind Man’s Spot

    My hands touch the flagstones of your tomb.In this world of persistent shadowsmy feet go numb walking to this spot.I hear the wind scuff the white granite all aroundossifying thedirt, blood, stonebelow into my nostrilsand lungs. I sit on the benchnear youalmost seeingthe specterof birdsstopping their prolong flightinto the comingstillness of night trees,never really knowing…

  • Chalk

    Chalk

    They traced their chalk hand first; yellow, pink,  gold flowers second; memorized the white  ridges of that good dog paw mold from the vet third; all the accretions, good and bad of the pastel outlines of  life’s  hopscotch fourth; copied dutifully the chalkboard forms fifth; leaving only the final one drawn by others, the one…

  • Practice

    Practice

    The day’s practice arrives:awakening knowing one more day stretching arms and toes until the deadness fades, breathing in life until you are out of breath,cutting off the words in a hopeless conversation,playing the scales over and over,until each day ends and sleep comes againand the waking dawn orders us to practice again.

  • Dogwoods

    Dogwoods

    The rusted tips of the dogwood petals, fall after fall, indented to the shape of crosses, leaving bloody crucifixes after bloody crucifixes.The collected light, felt wounded,drenched in a suffering beauty, the kind the soul draws as perfectly straight.The red berries, past ripe are now wine. They stand naked in the air in lovely shame,past innuendo,…

  • A Discovered Graveyard

    A Discovered Graveyard

    (After Robert Frost’s In a Disused Graveyard)The dead come along the living unexpectedly,their grassy treads kicking upon their stonesonce upright now downturned in the weeds.They just wish to rest in peace, away from these stumbling fools that wound themselveson weathered marble letters written large: “THE ONES WHO LIVING COME TODAYTO READ THE STONES AND GO…

  • Truths

    Truths

    Three things that are silent and true:the twilight hour,the plummeting snow,death beneath every window.

  • Remember the Grass

    Remember the Grass

    Delight in the cool grass,its elusive, delicate, shy,brush on your face,tingling arms, bare soles- for one day you will be too far beneath even its touch.

  • Serenade

    Serenade

    Down the beach, the strum of guitars, congas,the rhythms of life knowing its longings.The come on is intense. It sweeps me along.Yet, I pause. The sea has deceived me before. It calls out with a jaunty chant, “I love you.”Its greatness sings from sun to moon.“I’m not asking you to run. Walk slowly,Take your time,…

  • the   spaces   she   left   behind

    the spaces she left behind

    they turned    brown    before   you    arrived by    the    time  you   came   on    them swiped  the    dust    off  turned   the    pages they    were crumbling    you never   looked at    the rest    surrendering   them   to   silence     you      could      lie     down    again          now there    was   nothing   between   you     now the    rain     was    beginning     outside or      was      it        just     the    …

  • Beautiful Flashes of Life

    Beautiful Flashes of Life

    Grandma Clara knew this day would come,so she put on her favorite blue & white dress.She had been waiting for this, for a long time.Clara switched the television channel to the one her grandkids watched all the time.She pulled up her wheelchair, stowed it neatly in the corner. Clara didn’t want her son/grandkids, stumbling over…

  • Earth

    Earth

    In May, he planted potatoes. He drew the furrows with a five teeth rake; filled in the holes, the long patches with ash mixed with sprouts; buried them deep one by one until the clean wore off his gloves and the ash covered them gray; until they absorbed the insipid, musty smell of earth and…

  • An Old Garden

    An Old Garden

    (After Richard Aldington’s Aux Vieux Jardin)Today I found an unknown garden in the woods.I do not know who carved this still pool fringedwith reeds amidst a forest browning for winter.Who decided to protect it from the tearing air,tended it to suckle water from dark clouds.All I know, it blooms with great delight, apartfrom the diverse…

  • Rainy Day

    Rainy Day

    Only the rain moves,nailing the houses into their own coffins. In childhood daysthe rain sailed down alleys.merrily sweeping motley papers, leaves,once, a tiny pink shoe—everything, to the sea, a rollicking circus calliope. Now the rain, the iron rain,lets the sky place itstombstones onevery single roof.

  • Juanito’s Dream

    Juanito’s Dream

    Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…

  • Dust

    Dust

    I find it easier to collect dust than move it around from feathery place to place.Dust is history. It holds the flavors of myself.Dust contains my words.It sits on my mantle adding more specks every year,life upon life on death.I see God in its ashes—He is dust and Dust is everythingIt swirls in endless ribbons…

  • Down Swing

    Down Swing

    I’m too old to swing in the air,let the wind blow my hair wild.I have grown beyond childish things. Gravity-time has chained me here.Now, I hold all of my fears dear,huddled in all my tears to care.This cheap pipe playground has rusted,lasting just one trusted summer.Childless, I’m not my mother’s peer. She exists all dead…

  • Sunflowers Flash Bye

    Sunflowers Flash Bye

    In my car, I speed by a field of sunflowers following the light as the sun follows them,  their life with me over in the flash of an eye, leaving only remembered halos in the shadows of buzzing bees whose journey, like mine, will be over by day’s end.

  • Parrots Call the Colors of a 1000 Names Remembered

    Parrots Call the Colors of a 1000 Names Remembered

    They meet everyday in the vermillion walltender colors of viridescent and lapis lazuli thatcaress the blood before it stains then fades,calling the colors of a thousand names rememberedThey drop their cracked seeds to be mashed into the mud of the cobbled street belowpreening each other’s feather to a quiet array,moaning softly, butting heads in ritual…

  • The Squirrel Holds Tight the Acorn

    The Squirrel Holds Tight the Acorn

    When I looked again, the squirrel with the acorn was gone, perhaps vanishing behind the trees.Minutes later, I noticed her gray shadow.She moved to me then ran the other way.In her fright, she did not notice the car, and the car did not notice her. For the driver, the squish could of have been another…

  • Magnolias

    Magnolias

    The Japanese Magnolias lean into the cicadas chirr,into the every shadows of the day,before returning back to the very open airthey keep to themselves before they die.

  • New Year’s Eve Comes and Goes

    New Year’s Eve Comes and Goes

    A friend I’ve know for but a year came a knock, knock, knocking at my door.He was cold and thin, and even though he wanted in, I did not open the door.He was once such a grand delight but now he was so so such a bore. Knock, knock, knock, his knuckles rappedagain, again. I…

  • Mirror, Mirror

    Mirror, Mirror

    The light Light the in the mirror mirror in the casts its casts it light lights, on the light not the light that has been that’s been cast away, cast away, that reverse reverse that to what is which is too real. real.The looking glass proclaims only the life that is in its light. Life…

  • The Water Calls  Us Down

    The Water Calls Us Down

    The water call us down.She names us and we call her ours. Down we goand we sleep.Awakenedwe remember- that blue pool-the one with no bottom.

  • The Last Tree

    The Last Tree

    The last tree sheds its leavesin the barren dry knowing the breezewill breathe its revival.

  • Sheltered, I Am Now

    Sheltered, I Am Now

    No terror seedsin my soul. The gentledust of my mother remainsall around me. Her old comfortssnuggle away any regretsuntil our heavens meet. Not soon,but soon enough I will remain with you.Why will I decay in the crypt when only smoke can rise to joy?That cloudy mass that rises from burning,burns tears beyond the wear of…

  • Nourishment

    Nourishment

    The buried placenta knows not the suffering of the womb,only that it once nourished.

  • Getting It Right

    Getting It Right

    I try on my death suit regularly, and even after my cancer surgery, it’s still too long in the arms and legs..This year I did manage to find a comfy pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2that don’t make my toes numb.in a few years I will come into a nice inheritance and will…

  • Side Effects

    Side Effects

    In my dreams I ride bicycles. In life, I once knew how to ride them.Now I am old and side effects have my feet missing the pedals and falling down.

  • The Boy Who Dances in the Light

    The Boy Who Dances in the Light

    Shout into the eyes of sunlight of the boy who dances in the light.   Every dragon’s death foretells this child onto even the smallest realm.   The Phoenix is an ally to the boy who forges worlds.   The stars proclaim his shine this boy who dances in the light.   He is the…

  • Oncology Nurse

    Oncology Nurse

    Every touch is a devotion, every soft phrase a prayer to life, to continue living. – A nightingale, a dove gowned in heavenly blue a ministering survival chant. – Thank you and double checks are abundant. – They minister consistent kindness for they live among the blasted. – There is no sniping, no rivalries, just…

  • The Nacre of Cancer

    The Nacre of Cancer

    I have no taste for whiskey, although it seems over the years I have developed a proclivity for cancer, for building the nacre into  pearl.   It’s funny how one can live with death scooted to the borders, listening to it rap the door with sub-audible gusts that only your dog hears and barks at.…

  • Catacombs Know No Smiles

    Catacombs Know No Smiles

    Catacombs are full of bones snuggling in the disgrace of others. Hipbones piled on top of skulls, the absence of lower jaws denying the departed a smile, the eternal existential joke of insulting the living with the knowledge of their ultimate end.   Femur, skull, femur skull is the monotonous pattern of the Paris catacombs.…

  • Death Is Like No Movie I Have Ever Seen: The Trailers

    Death Is Like No Movie I Have Ever Seen: The Trailers

    At the Miracle my young brother saw death for the first time in a shark called Bruce, Jaws swallowing the onscreen boy on the raft in a chum wave that rippled from the light, a death that drenched every body in the shock of a nature devouring everything it sees; in an illusion real enough…

  • I am deaf and not your simile

    I am deaf and not your simile

    I am deaf not deaf, not small d death as some people like to say, but little d as in leaf, as in small l life, even though, you have to drop the l and add the d, for all of us to get and end there, although neither is usually capitalized unless it refers…

  • Death is like no movie I have ever seen: the commercials

    Death is like no movie I have ever seen: the commercials

    The movie of my death has not been made but it will suck, get O stars, a thumbs down, the bad final review no one will ever see or care about, not because the life wasn’t glorious- it was- but because death robs life of glory and action, and movies are called motion pictures for…