This is Love

                                                                          

















Love, pain, and sorrow
Many fibers criss and cross
As the past taints tomorrow
Life is a weaving of such loss.

Though the shoot is fragile
And the wick smolders
I will to walk the extra mile
And love though life is colder.

In woe, new hope enlivens
The dark sees a new light shine.
As life unfolds — love awakens
To the only one I call mine.

Many waters, many deaths
Cannot quench the burning flame
From the vows to my last breath
It will endure the pain and shame.

This is love,
My Rose,
My Abigail.
My sorrow

Many fibers criss and cross
As the past taints tomorrow
Life is a weaving of such loss.


** I wrote this in 1999. I found it by accident when cleaning up some files. My marriage to Abigail is ending in divorce now. Seeing this poem from 1999 is yet another reminder of the long journey of pain we've been through. It's my deepest sorrow that we never found light on the other side.

Unknowing

Dusty rose tints the billowing grey,
And the day bends into the night,
Like blood in water in still time,
Muses whispering a passion play.

And rain rent from drying clouds,
Shimmers crystalline in fading skies,
And rose tints ferment to wine,
As evening robes in darker shrouds.

King Sol, wounded, winces crimson,
And piercing once last the orchid veil,
His shafts of light like bolts extend,
'Til the night-watch prevail, imprison.

As the last embers of day smolder,
And Queen Luna ascends the sky,
Blue light beckons to lovers and poets,
Numinous whispers to every beholder.

And the wolves pine in moonlight howl,
For few sons and daughters of men,
Will gaze skyward with mouth agape,
So miss such beauty as they strowl.

Unknowing.

Thou, Thee, and Me

Cloudward gazing on grassy bed,

As air anoints my brow with dew,

And  pining groans into the sky,

A world of pain within my head,

This longing aches that all be new,

An earnest prayer lags to a "why?"

Oh Thou.

This lavish loveliness all about,

Such beauty breaks into my soul,

And tearing eyes stare at the sun,

My quiet sigh rises to a shout,

Incongruous beauty enacts a toll, 

My praying tears before the one, 

To thee.

Yet in these times,  all seems lost.

Sons and daughters cast to the Baals,

The meaning of persons — eclipsed.

As ozone and sprites bear the cost,

Love and dust like weight on scales,

Such anomie–vertigo in betwixt,

'Ah me.

On Life's Way

Ever the dim melancholy cry,
Ever the moon pursues the sun,
Crepuscule, aurora, but glimpse
Each other, as but one light,
Ascends to the apex of the sky.

Pining, like the Dane to his Regine,
Knowing the searing heat of love,
Knowing the dark angels within,
This longing, ever lost in longing,
Unable to leap the dark ravine.

In setting free the broken sparrow,
Authenticity carried such a weight,
Lives broken, and lives reformed,
And bounded mind in leap of faith,
Lover lilts,  pierced by his own arrow.

Sometimes the road less traveled,
Is a sadness, is a sorrow of solitude.
Not every love though  forged in vow,
Grows old and deep in lasting bonds.
So Kierkegaard whose very self unraveled.

Yet was found in the arms,
That caught his perilous leap,
Catching each perilous leap,
Along life's way.

Unswaddled

Ghost mists expand and swallow sky,
In coal, then sallow, and back-lit white,
And beasts, and birds, and you and I,
From the eye of God are hid from sight.

And below nebulous, vaporous forms,
Time slipping incognito into the day,
Shadowless shadowlands of pending storms,
A still-life canvas — a stilted portrait.

Nimbus shades cocoon over nascent corona,
But edges fray from a mass restlessness,
Creamy ribbons flow from azural persona,
'Til all sigh the air of celestial undress.

And light, and drops, and bracing breeze,
Summons flight from flightless flesh,
And below my toes roll vale and trees,
Unswaddled ecstasy in auroral enmesh.

Alive.

Love

If life were made of light and laughter,
How be? How does this sacrament play?
Part improvisation, part cacophony,
The movement, the music, the muse.
And in the lengthening of the day —
Soothing in symmetry of fear and beauty,
Not a science, but a magic, an alchemy,
Angels conjure red from skies of gray,
Ever beckoning souls, each to the other.

If we be tapestry of diamond and dirt,
How be? For each, 'tis every other thought,
Part angel choir, part wolf's moon howl,
The cry of dereliction, a blushing swoon.
Here — the formation of souls are wrought.
Within love's longings and love's losings,
The fire in the equations of our mythology,
Beauty and truth imprint; such is the lot,
Of creatures oft formed in a world of hurt.

If love burn brighter than faith and hope,
How be? That lovers 'oft pine melancholic,
Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere,
Archetype brother and sister to every heart,
As if every love were born of the diabolic,
Yet love in longing ever loves to beckon,
'Til love itself is worshiped in sacrament;
In places wild, kneeling in a spirit bucolic,
Love is metaphor, parable,truth and trope,

Eternal.

Winter Waking

Breathing deep the ghostly January air,
A dozing mind cool breath will spur,
Though numbed in winter's den, will stir,
And skin will taunt and goosebump hair,
Awakens me.

Silver rays evoke a gaze one New Year morn,
Clouds bleed light into smoke gray sight,
And a cold faded world bittered in blight,
Reveals its hues and sheds its coat forlorn;
Unforsakens me.

Stepping in light, as light to souls alights
Tears crystal ducts moved in angel symmetry,
With beasts, Saints, sinners in strange amity,
This sacrament washes my soul in dawning rites,
Enquickens me.

Crystal light,
Clears my sight,
Reborn,
Reborn,
Reborn.