It was a peaceful neighborhood

until the signs started speaking—

first they warned us,

then they laughed.

Now a child runs forever—

a small joke from the underworld.

But even the joke feels holy

when the light hits right—

when the mind forgets itself

and floats like clouds

through the blue dome

of a sticker someone placed

with quiet mischief.

The sign says SLOW.

The sign says CHILDREN.

But it’s the skull that knows.

Knows the world slows down

only after.

Knows how warning

is a privilege

disguised as concern.

Is it still running—

that figure on the sign,

some version of us,

once wind-stung,

barefoot, unafraid?

We wave,

as if it matters.

I saw him once—

third-grade me, maybe,

invisible cape, skinned knees,

halfway to Mars

and all the way lost in joy.

He’s still out there,

dodging traffic

and dreaming about outer space,

or cotton candy,

or something better.

The sign still holds

the shape of a child

leaning into the forever

no one meant to promise.

We keep walking.

We obey.

We forget.

But the child,

skull full of clouds,

keeps running
into the deep,

unspoken now.

Peaks Island, Maine

Show me your original face before you were born.

                     			—Zen Koan

I walked in

because I thought I could leave

myself behind.

The trees didn’t care.

The leaves kept falling—

with or without me.

I stood by the water

and saw a face.

Not mine.

Just shape and light—

no owner.

We want to believe

in something that stays.

But even stillness

moves

if you sit long enough.

Belief, doubt—

they’re just names.

What’s real doesn’t speak.

It doesn’t need to.

I turned back

and left nothing behind.

Nothing was ever mine

to begin with.

Peaks Island, Maine

In a shed
behind a boat

a giraffe hugs

a mannequin

in lingerie.

She’s taped up

like hope

with no follow-through.

Left breast: duct tape.

Right breast: same.

They appear

to be having

a moment.

One arm raised,

one finger pointing—

at what?

Nobody knows.

Maybe God.

Maybe the fuse box.

You cannot

roller skate

in a buffalo herd.

But you can

make eye contact

with a fiberglass giraffe

and feel

understood.

Do giraffes

recognize mirth?

If so,

they hide their tell.

Too much thinking

chokes the magic.

Too much seriousness

snaps the string.

Let it be—

and the surreal settles

like a memory

of an almost familiar song.

Just look.

Don’t ask.

Sit still.

Don’t name it.

Don’t fix it.

Just—

watch.

People want meaning.

They want cause

and effect,

a punchline

with timing.

But not everything

needs to resolve.

A mannequin.

A giraffe.

Some duct tape.

And the question:

Do giraffes recognize mirth?

Or are they simply better

at not needing to?

Sense arrives late

and ruins the view.

You cannot

roller skate

in a buffalo herd.

But here,

you can listen

to plastic silence,

witness

unorthodox congeniality,

and know,

without knowing,

that stillness lives

in the unsolved.

Porter Lake, Maine

The bed sagged like a cracked raft,

smelling of rust, salt, and lost time.

The other side was hollowed out,

a dent where someone used to dream.

The air bent yellow at the edges.

A radio somewhere cracked and whined —

low country and western misery,

a voice leaking out about someone who never came home.

The floor leaned west, 
always west,

because that's where things go 
when they’re too tired to fight.

The clock on the wall had stopped 
sometime last night,

but no one noticed, 
not even the dark.

The sea dragged the dead nets, 
and the chain inside the walls, 
hummed low 
against the bones of the room.

It ran through my empty wallet,

through my cracked teeth,

through the long thin cigarettes 
burning themselves out.

It rattled whenever I breathed too hard.

The motel bible sat open on the nightstand,

a page torn loose,

a note scrawled in blue ink:

"don’t wait for me."

I tasted rust,

saw the green of rotting rope,

felt the floorboards creak 
with a tired red sadness.

White gulls circled low,
no purpose left;
their shadows vanish
into the sea’s forgetting.

I thought about standing up,
walking toward the window,
singing along 
with the sad broken radio.

I didn’t move. 
The tide had already 
taken everything.

Ocean Cay, Atlantic Ocean

Clouds move

like thoughts—

shapeless, then clear,

then gone.

The wood beneath me

leans and softens.

A crab—small, rust-red—

clicks past

without meaning.

They say

the notion of emptiness

was understood here once.

No sermon.

No symbol.

Just the tide

covering what it could.

Not loss.

Not absence.

But space

for the self

to rise—

shadow and light

together.

The sea

keeps no stories.

It lifts,

it leaves.
I sit,

and let it.

Peaks Island, Maine