Poems

STARTLEMENT

It is a forgotten pleasure, the pleasure
  of the unexpected blue-bellied lizard

skittering off his sun spot rock, the flicker
  of an unknown bird by the bus stop.

To think, perhaps, we are not distinguishable
  and therefore no loneliness can exist here.

Species to species in the same blue air, smoke—
  wing flutter buzzing, a car horn coming.

So many unknown languages, to think we have
  only honored this strange human tongue.

If you sit by the riverside, you see a culmination
  of all things upstream. We know now,

we were never at the circle’s center, instead
  all around us something is living or trying to live.

The world says, What we are becoming, we are
  becoming together.

The world says, One type of dream has ended
  and another has just begun.

The world says, Once we were separate,
  and now we must move in unison.