Poems

H

ow 

we lose and we find ourselves. 

isn't that The Way?

and with each new view

we fall in love with our essential Mystery

all over again.

this is not the work of some Narcissa

vain and self-congratulating.

for i would be in love with you, too

(if you were here.present.breathing.fleshuponmyflesh.

bone upon my Inner Knowing.)

How I would scrawl your name in a thousand tiny circles

on the back of an old piece piece of paper torn 

in the corner 

and yellowed.

but i am here

by myself

sitting at the desk in this Middle school of life

finally understanding that life is about dangling on the end of a sigh

where there is neither exhale nor inhale

but only the still and breathless suspended wonder.

so when i find a moment 

(still and breathless suspended) i wonder and 

take a photograph

yes, of me, 

because i am there. there 

to know what is. 

to love what is.

and 

to find god 

in every shrouded face.

© SHA MICHELE

i am nothing, if not a woman, 

except 

perhaps the desert...

he was german

he was my lover

his hands were more than adequate

a carpenter he was used to touching

wood and lathes 

and more

each day he'd teach me a different phrase

with and in his tongue

i asked him when the sun one day was low and white,

and i half-

covered in a sheet, "if i were a kind of wood,

what wood would i be?"

"Pine," he groaned and rolled a smoke.

"It's hard and knotty and really difficult to work with,

but when done just right,

there is nothing more beautiful--

to me."

he took this picture,

my camera, his hands

dusted with the sands

of a storm just blown.

© SHA MICHELE