When leaves shake,
I blame ‘the wind,’ but I don’t see it.

I say I don’t see it, my eyes open
on other invisibles, accumulated
aches, reverie’s clutter.

I say I don’t see them either, what breezes by.
I say I don’t care
but write it down, how pain

not sharp enough to scratch a pearl,
cuts through the view. The urge
to grab at air and make it visible.

Li Po wrote, “Why work so hard,
life is a huge dream.”
Calderon agreed, 'Life’s a dream” and added
“dreams are dreams.”
But Shakespeare worried. What dreams may come
once we’re gone?

Some cross themselves, kiss their thumbs, pray
not to go where life’s dreams end. On more than epitaph
they work to leave their mark.

Looking back I marvel most at eyes in family-trees
where we were truly seen
as yet invisible
on distant shores, shadows in endless green.

WISHBONE VOICES
        “Les jours s’en vont je demeure.” Apollinaire (1880-1920)

It takes longer to climb into each day,
walk up the stairs, not two-by two
as when the wishbone voices siren-sang.

I watch the passers-by pass by,
observe their outer self-defining,
their violent hopes ongoing -- out of sight.

The busy drift, the fabricated purposes.
Troubled by diminished sparks of youth,
routinized by the sharp Sun.

My neck metronomes with the going/coming
pavement pound, a traveling stay-at-home.
You’ve done this, I bet, found treasure in a vacant stare.

Ventured into the fancy of another’s view.
Not knowing where the poetry ends, and you begin

W. M. Rivera, College Park, Maryland