What is… inherent,

what’s not… implied

 

Epiphanous moments

—waiting inside

 

(Bryn Mawr College: January, 2021)

Do you have to become what you observe

to really understand

 

To claim a new identity,

your psyche contraband

 

Must you pass straight through the mirror,

reflections left behind

 

To truly know what lies beyond

—whose essence you must find

 

(Bryn Mawr College: January, 2021)

What you ask me to deny,

I in many ways affirm

 

The truth will not belie

what your apprehension spurns

 

Believing in myself

and the voice that speaks within

 

I cast new seeds into the air

—and beckon the four winds

 

(Haverford College: January, 2021)

I shun the words you long to hear,

my heart and spirit cry

 

The votive candle burning down,

its flame a dimming lie

 

My pen to struggle against your will,

and scribe the message owned

 

That blood has drafted and pain rewrites

—not borrowed nor then loaned

 

(Valley Forge: January, 2021)

With one pen in the inkwell,

eternity got wet

 

The words to dance and laugh and pray,

phrasing’s still unmet

 

With one pen in the inkwell,

the future kissed the past

 

The moments now, the moments then

—Siamese at last

 

(Haverford College: January, 2021)

 

The immediacy of time,

its reference untold

 

The beginning repeating,

not young—and not old

 

(The New Room: January, 2021)

Spending the future,

saving the past

 

Tomorrow debentured

—moments that last

 

(The New Room: January, 2021)

The poorest among us

only have money

 

The richest endowed

—with nothing but time

 

(The New Room: January, 2021)

In the currency of dreams

—you can never make change

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2021)

Music can only be heard one way,

words have a different refrain

 

Melody imprisoned by note and score,

what’s written when read apt to change

 

The ear a prisoner to the composer’s delight,

to listen—a captive within

 

But reading the lines that a poet inscribes

ever changing—each time you begin

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2021)