One Morning…

Aubade

0331.2025

A poem for the dawn that never softened.

For those who enter the light only to find the dark.

This morning’s heart awoke to death—

not a glorious flower

stretching its neck

to its own dawn,

but something gray,

unfinished—

a breath that never quite

found its warmth or reason.

No fragment of beauty,

no hint of song or

well-meaning hour

could lift the heaviness.

Even the air moves

like apology—

but not around me.

Everything is darker

in the light of day.

The voices wear tones

like weapons,

gentle only with each other.

I walk into their fire

and they lay the bullets.

They name me

before I speak—

a blur, a burden,

a failed warmth.

Not one of them asks

if I am broken

or just quiet.

(They assume I am

what they would be

if they were I)

And the cruelest part—

the mirror they mistake me for.

m.c.f.

Image 2024, m.c.f.

Shedding Attachment

Untitled #12

0220.2025

Not all seen is known; not all hidden is lost.

I

Anymore, care’s quiet—

“Just hush,” it says.

So I do—sliding forward,

smooth, effortless,

even through turbulence.

The emptiness settles in,

comfortable now:

The possibilities of youth fade,

replaced by waiting, drifting,

searching for substance—

a sign of life in the vast silence—

a sign of change.

Like starlight, dim but there,

pulsing, unseen, unknown—

I exist.

We are made

from star stuff—

but some don’t see.

(Some wade in the shallows.)

II

And yet—

Silence can be startled.

This morning, the sky’s mouth

is a dragon’s exhale, its roar

pulling my life from

its nighttime reverie—

Flowers shake off darkness,

the weightlessness has them opening

with faces turned high

and happily mated to the hour’s

rays, bathing their color,

now infused with love’s fire.

Tenderly—the rose, orchid,

and marigolds kiss my eyes.

I’ve become dressed in their scent—

my heart in bloom,

my blood singing

“I am coming alive,

deep into love!”

m.c.f.

Good From Bad

The World Dawn

0219.2025

Here we go together,

awakening in this beautiful morning,

lost in its potential—

when the dust of destruction is unknowable.

Lately, I think of you and your country,

how you’ve skirted the grave,

carried the losses—

and of her, moving through the hours,

not whole, not gathering herself,

but bearing history’s construction

and its modern decay on her back.

It’s only the dust in her mouth,

carried on the wind from the sea—

and already, someone she knows is the dust.

This is why we can’t cry anymore.

How does anyone complete the tasks at hand

when the last hour looms,

when you move in the proof of it?

Everything we do is tinged with the reminder—

the final hours among us, a phantom

watching our joy, ax in hand.

Who knew the caravanserai

of suits and bread,

ivory tower Barbies, and the wretched

could bring such potential to living—

because the going of my country, ‘tis of thee

is anywhere in the world.

m.c.f.