The Naked Atheist

Category: Once

  • Jenny’s Wind

    Jenny would love this gusty wind
    were she with me here to see it playing
    in these tall oak and birch she knows so well.

    Yes, Jenny
    would love this gutty wind which sneaks
    beneath the leaves, rustling them

    until they waken. The breeze
    pretends it’s morning still
    pretends it doesn’t know about the dark
    the silence
    which has swept across the world

    since yesterday.

    The wind is trying harder now.
    Relentlessly it tries
    to sweep the leaves and branches

    into some sort of playful mood
    some whim
    to rouse them from the death-like mourning
    of their silence.

    Now and then
    it pauses haltingly a moment. Then

    rampages
    rampaging
    as if to chase away the darkness

    as if to quell
    the soundless whelming of her death
    before it blackens out September.

    © 1990, 2006 

  • Lake

    the cardinal-flower
    i saw
    this morning

    while walking beside
    a lake i’d seen
    for only an hour

    pressed without warning
    deep inside
    and made me dream

    of her lips’ sweet power

    © 1990, 2008, 2016 

  • Love Story

    Carl & I spent many Mays
    roaming hills on sunny days
    fighting pirates, routing thieves
    building castles, climbing trees
    right though to the breezy fall
    when leaves became our rampart wall.

    Mid-summer of our sixteenth year
    all changed, another sex appeared:
    a dirt brunette, and a blonde who tracks
    Carl up the hill and back.

    Laughter echoes between the three
    making it very clear to me
    between the two he’ll get to choose.

    Lucky Carl—he cannot lose.
    His eyes are good, he will not miss
    her soft blonde hair, the way it twists
    and curves like Nature made it do,
    and gleams with love in the afternoon.

    Then her face he won’t forget—
    the chin so soft, yet firmly set
    beneath her light blue eyes (those sing
    like summer raindrops in the wind).

    But I get the girl he leaves behind,
    God, I hope he is blind
    and does not love the one that’s blonde:

    she’s the girl my dreams are on.

  • Summer Love

    Now winter’s come
    I like to hum
    and sometimes sing a tune

    To bring to me
    memories
    of times we had last June

    When I gave you
    some summer love
    beneath the night’s white moon

    Recall we were
    beside the shore—
    a woman, and a man

    Who held her firmly
    next to him
    on blankets made of sand

    Your eyes on mine
    were soft and kind
    as you pressed against my hips

    And the stars above
    bright with love
    as we tasted with our lips

    The waves rolled in
    and in the din
    we danced a while

    Afterwards
    we had no words
    but silence and a smile

    As eye to eye
    beneath the sky
    we shed our clothes and hugged

    Our bodies stark
    in the dark
    nakedly we loved

    The morning smiled
    on clothing piled
    aside our makeshift bed

    And was no talk—

    I’ve often thought
    of things I might have said

    While rapt amazed
    I gazed
    at the woman I should wed

    But now like summer
    you are gone—
    my winter lingers on

    And midnight brings
    a pain to things
    my heart has felt too long