Using Happy in a Poem

Spring arrives in cold wet buds
and packs the trail with color.
Green is shipped home in winter.

Banks give way to supermarkets
parking lots become condos,
and a restaurant, is now a pool.

Down the street on Ashby Avenue,
a pizza parlor changed overnight
into a music store.

A year ago, you moved into my heart.
I've become what I've always wanted.
H A P P Y.

Tkhine in Nisan

Offshoots of spider
plants on my deck keep time
with the wind as do leaves

of the California Laurel behind them,
moving with something that can only be felt
and not seen.

I am feeling my way in this month of Nisan
showered and rubbed with olive oil
as I burn caskets of memory,

faces that shaped me
by what they demanded,
drifting inside their own shredded bark.

Now vernix covers my nakedness.
I am in a subtle time of my age
when I can appreciate what sheathed choices contain.

A goose feather for the counter-top.
Bless this man who comes to me
as I listen for his car driving up to the gate,

and let me always remain open toward him
and to myself
and to You.