Rayn Roberts Poems

Buddha before enlightenment: starved, bony
Our world, showing the bones of war, bones of desire-
Look to the moment with hope to survive
Enlightenment is here, yet we think we move toward it.
...

for Kelli

I found you gone when I arrived
...

Sometime before the land turned away from light

The wind in the wild mustard slowed
The sun, being where is always is, the moon too
...

The splash of water on rocks

at the high end
...

They led us to sunlight on the grass beside the school
Brought an extension cord, a phonograph with a box
Of many colored long silks, played the Firebird
La Mer, Swan Lake, and suddenly
...

The long hours of your drinking are now the short hours of my sleep.
Sleep covers me with black sheets
but your latino voices startle my ears.
I would cry out the window, ¡Cállate! , but civility prevents me.
...

Had he known the beauty of an apple, seen it a flower
In the palm of her hand, seen in his wife's hand the sun
Light to a tree of knowledge, knowledge of air and weather
The river, the flame, the earth, he'd know earth was woman
...

Blessed are the fishermen that free the humble pelican
From sinking line and hook tangled in a beak,
Holy men are these who catch fish and release
The insensitive prey, cold-blooded are they
...

I'd thought it idea only or myth, but I met her

Anima, my other half
Fair skinned, blue eyed, blonde as I am
...

Like the silence of those who deny truth, the silence in Death Valley
Nearly denies my being-

It is a dreadful void the white silence of my sister the moon
...