Seedling

If I were to describe your halo glow

Your beaming smile and your radiance

I don't know who you will be when you grow

Your chest rises and falls in sweet cadence

My baby as you sit here in my arm

Your tight grip and your suck are my delight

In darkness just us two in the star’s charm

I feed you and soothe the cry of the night

A seedling planted in the ground of time

Potential overflows yet to be seen 

To sprout my child into the sublime 

This time I treasure until you must wean

My child let me in, who will you be?

I ponder as I sing your melody 

Star Strangled Banner [Updated Nov. 2, 2015]

Although "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" 

I double lock my doors at night

as if the iron bolt will keep the fear from infiltrating my heart.

Granted that "one small step for man is  

one giant step for mankind"

I still stride through the college campus looking over my shoulder

because an astronaut suit wouldn't be enough armor to protect me. 

Nevertheless, "I have a dream"

that one day this land will be filled with Ruby Bridges of hope

instead of the steel beams of metal detectors.

And yes, "I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you 

and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon". 

But the loudest voice is the one that vows to rise from the ashes. 

And while you "ask not what your country can do for you

but what you can do for your country", 

do you feel United or just the States of America?

The Ocean Floor Updated [Oct. 13, 2015]

Empty crystal spheres peering into a world 

that tramples above the ocean she drowns in.

Legs of giants swinging purposefully around her

in a whirl of city movement she does not belong to.

Anchored to the cracks in the pavement 

and her shopping cart of treasure once buried. 

Instead of swimming to the surface

her words sink below the subway lines. 

A fish out of water but not yet on land

the streets are a house without being a home. 

As if every Starbucks cup is filled with hemlock

because hers is used for collecting change.

As the humans walk by and pretend not to see

because God forbid their consciences should soil.

While she knows they can’t give her all she needs

she needs them all to give. 

Though she’s swimming upstream 

against a tide of slacks and heels.

She’ll always have the marked fins that make her a fish

albeit in an ocean too salty. 

And only because the guilt was too much 

and those empty crystal spheres seemed more to me 

like an oracle’s crystal balls

did I give her my bottle of water.

When she looked up and said “thank you”  

I finally realized that her crystal spheres were the clearest I have ever seen.

Glistening to the other end of the ocean.