Hush Nova

Nebular nursery ignite nascent stars,
All burning, burning, tiger bright,(1)
Fiery hunger ever yearns-takes flight,
Inspiring lovers and wagers of wars.

The stars burn bright in lovers eyes,
Scorching nests of sweet communion,
'Til stars and loves dissolve in disunion.
Once a candle lit, it but burns and dies.

Sun shatters —a fiery frore, a dying star —
The fires of hell burn cold like failing love —
Verily sorrowful, the plummeting dove —
Reborn  raven — plumage and pith as tar.

Conflagrant novas fade to inky black,
Singularity where light is locked away,
Soul's bleed silver in rot and in decay,
Love and light woefully fade into lack.

Star light, Star bright, First star,
Remembered and mourned,
In black sky, stone heart,
Cracks.



1. A line adapted from William Blakes: "The Tyger"

Missing

Streams of mists stratus, endless,
Reds, blues conned, from corneas,
Weight of clouds, smother soulless,
Chirps, warbles, silenced in apnea.


Cover of coolness, rage in presence,
Energies strike and leave for dead,
Colorless still, and void the absence,
Pea soup fog, seduced Sol, then fled.
 
Cloudless, sky-less, this empty canvas,
Nor warmth or cold, nor word or breath,
The stars, slaughtered in darkening novas,
Twilight fades, the god mourns Ashtoreth.


A stream, crimson, cupped, to lips, taken,
A stone soul, a name called to awaken.

December Sky

The darkness of  December's evening sky,
'Tis the perfect canvass for the hand of God,
Ethereal, tar-sands, taut across the heavens,
Swallows all in pitch, but will chose to laud,
One sweet sad portend, to make a spirit sigh.

And see the cloudy mist in the dark midnight,
Like a gassy film upon the swampy scum,
Back-lit as elusive Artemis, stalks the ages,
Then the curtain passes and hear the thrum,
Chords of soul's desire, plucked in lunar light.

Hosts of starry ghosts emerge the inky black,
Constellations clear their cadre for the advent,
Bright stars — the baby and angels in Gloria choir,
Boughs bend o'er skies like shepherd supplicants,
And I too, in quietness begin to feel my lack.

In the darkness of December's darkest hour,
The Brother to every son and daughter of man,
Born to us, the morning star, this Christmas morn,
Though the evil will pierce both foot and hand,
Fragile, yet brightly burns the love that will power,

Salvation.

Cool Breeze

Tapping windows like endless fingertips,
Drum, drumming rhythmic droplets,
Intimate, like a cool breath shiver,
Down the neck, down the spine,
Goosebump arms, legs in frosty nips,
Piercing garment, skin, and bone,
To taunt the nerves in dulling ache,
'Til limbs cradle in a shuffling dance,
And puffy breaths escape through lips,
Blue with Boreas breath.

Throngs

Bare arms waving, fingers extending,
Garments of rainbow tattered and blown,
Gnarly, knuckled, entangled, yet graceful,
A thicket of bramble, a coterie of crones,
Stray.

Pleading to grey sky for garments of green,
Endless fingers sinew and lattice the heavens,
Like pilgrims throng the path to a shrine,
Airily, this company coiffed in lichens,
Sway.


As their numbers extend in the failing light,
Endless frames with crackled skin of bark,
Seem to demur to the autumnal summons,
Bowing and blending in the shadowless dark,
Pray.

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.