What Matters

The stoic shimmer of spring leaves trembled by a breeze.
The quick pulse of a lizard's brain, numbed by the hand of a child.
A wispy phoenix in cirrus clouds that drift on a summer's day.
The twisting shriek of a stillborn mouse, echoed in the shell of a walnut.
A blue salamander that dreams of autumn windows.
A glint of moon on the sad eyelash ocean.
A parrot beaded with Aztec sweat above an azure pool.

Busts of Chopin rising in the cumulus,
bursting upon the eye,
an etude vaporized
before the ear can hear its phrasing.

An orange arc of ear
transposed against the plaster
as you lay behind your lover
in the dripping winter thaw.

Trumpets that blare
at oblique angles
beneath a rushing treebark sky.

A vine-covered shrine
viewed through eyes
slapped to tears by passing fronds.

What matters cannot be articulated
but rises in blurry language:
writing viewed through water,
obscured by tides and bubbles
yet rising towards the surface.