Hawk

Like a dancer floats above the stage,
Glides o'er thespians on hairlike stings,
Like Peter Pan, perhaps, softly alights,
On window sill, folding arms like wings,
Effortless, guileless, glide through the blue,
Your cry echoes long as the siren sings,
Drawing breath from me.

Your wings flit aside stale drafts of air,
Poised seraph on the breath of the wind,
Mobile-immobile, as if painted on clouds,
With back-lit wingspan, the sun has limned,
To eyes sky pining for your graceful glide,
A sight that raises the down and chagrined,
Drawing awe from we.

And a blink transforms thee, angel to fury,
Wisps of chilled breath as talons extend,
Oblivious oblivion fate the rat or the hare,
Plummeting kill and with prey you ascend,
Then shortly resume, sacral and ethereal,
Painting sky as your cry will ever  portend,
Drawing fear, in love, to be.

Story of the Earth

In wrinkled cliffs that endless sinew,
And folds of crust, of soil, of stone,
This grandeur presses upon my breast,
Endless acres, since the world was new,
And wind and water as fingers to clay,
Shapes in softness or in violent hew.

And calls the voice: "again, again,"
O'er azure lakes and mountain pass,
Bloom, and leaf, and cub, and spawn,
In blink of light come through the glass,
To unfurl, unfold, to suckle, to swarm,
Creation's cacophony — the holiest mass.

Here, unfold my limbs and blink my eyes,
One of the cast of this evolving creation,
Part tooth and claw, part seraphic light,
Times of terrible torment and beatific elation,
Such beauty, such trauma, such is the truth,
Of our world dancing amid the constellations.


The story of the earth.

That Road, Again

Wandering, wandering, wondering, walk,
Places and pathways to no place at all,
Curse to the calendar, curse to the clock,
Timekeeping distracts and casts a pall,
On pacing and thinking and taking stock,
To be walking awaking whatever befall.

Footfalls press on through the underbrush,
Unsteady the footfall that knows not its lot,
Backwood brambles, entangle and crush,
As clothing and hair, even skin are caught,
Then pause as a clearing whispers a shush,
In silence and solitude will my soul be taught.

Musing, mine eye, did spy a familiar path,
A passage neglected, like a long lost friend.
Evaded through the storm and its aftermath,
Now it freshly compels my soul to attend.
A hard climb, where grace tempered in wrath,
Redeems! For in penance the path I'll ascend.

Of those days where my feet had but strayed,
A wanton wandering in the dark night of my soul.
Are such days ever lost? How are they weighed?
Are they but flotsam floating on life's rocky shoal?
Such stumbles — the place where grace is conveyed,
The floundering footsteps of beloved young foal.

Wandering, wandering, wondering, walk,
Places and pathways to a place never seen,
In communio, in presence, my steps in lock,
Even while walking in that space in-between,
Walking soul soars-crying like a mystic hawk,
In body, in blood, on a path long foreseen.

Footfalls press on...