Fog

Somewhere are vales, somewhere are peaks,
Somewhere someone walks a-wondering,
And eyes probe blind and lamely seek.
Someone clouded in reverie and wandering;
Averts a gaze.

Plodding pointless — fingers comb the air,
Neither the sight nor the spirit guide,
Nor dreams, nor visions in the stare,
Without the flame of desire to abide;
No heart ablaze.

And the light that lights the darkness,
But dissipates through the nebular air,
While someone hard in habitual aggress,
Whittles lifeless as life does pare;
With eyes aglaze.

Now Puddleglum, the wise marsh wiggle,
So dour, yet a wiser friend than most,
Remembers the sun and flatly inveigles,
This someone receding like a airy ghost;
Whispering praise.

Fragments

How is it that moments bleed to days,
The days drift to months, to years,
Yet sacred times are forever fixed,
The times that mistral joys or fears.

Perceive a glance, an ache, a shiver,
Just like thousands of such kin before,
Grasp at neurons, or eyes, or even soul,
Then lost, they slip through a back door.

And life, like a river that gets away,
Yaws in an ever present evasion,
Except for those refreshing draughts,
When face in cold laps in libation.

A child aware that God is love,
A kiss in a quiet hall,
A hand enfolds a clammy palm,
First cry eyed through dewy orbs,
A second glowers at the touch of air,

And love in God feels very lost,
And lips that kiss may also curse,
And fingers also form to fists,
And cherubs wounded,
And cherubs wounded.

Time, like tears may be remembered,
As sacraments through the mundane,
Speaks and heals, as beauty, as truth,
Reveals the longing in all our pain.

And sacred time is forever fixed,
The time that mistrals joys and fears.

Kairos

In this world of concrete forms,
The roots and the weeds conspire,
Fissuring seems in roads and walks,
Artistic anarchy reaches higher,
As blithe in step the passersby,
In cranial space fail to admire,
The gift.

When a respite from distraction —
Being a time where time does fail
To lord it over my harried self —
Tears of leaves through light do sail,
And fleeting with the gentle breeze,
Sweetly interrupts the tired travail,
Adrift.

As a friend lingers with the leaves,
Paused to gaze in contemplation,
Their golden hues play in the light,
And ushers epiphany or incarnation,
While they rustle o'er roads and walks,
Deepens my vision and soft elation,
Uplift.

And just as quickly, as if a ghost,
Had once congealed and dissipated,
Time resumed its persistent pace,
Compelling with agenda unabated,
Still the leaves in softest rustle,
Echo truth in which we are created,
and sift,
A lament soul.

Single Shines the Light

Below a coal, colorless, cavernous sky,
Clouds settle in and sit o'er the vale,
A single slit single shines the light,
A single star extends white and pale.
This harbinger in the dark softly elicits,
The starry hosts the night may unveil.

As I walk in places dark and dangerous,
Where fiber, bone and soul are weighed,
For demon moguls to morsel and parcel,
Still – the coils of shade are stayed,
As yet single shines the single light,
For a breath, the nightmare is allayed.

And though light shines in the darkness,
The enduring darkness will not overcome,
As single shines the light will find,
An eye, a soul, that will not succumb.
Though melancholy masks such a company,
Angelic amity in light too bright to plumb.

In fields of stars,
The night is dawned,
In hope,
In life,
In love.

My Love

There is no place you have not touched,
Lightness of being, foolish and sweet,
I bared my all and held nothing back,
And in body and bliss we dared to meet,
My love.

There is no wound you have not seen,
Bowing my neck for fangs or for kiss,
I chose to gamble and bet all on trust,
Blind the eyes that see nothing amiss,
My love.

There is no place you have not pained,
As pain received and pain bestowed,
Like a predator that stalked at hope,
And charged to pain what was not owed,
My love.

There is no wound you have not aggrieved,
With trauma to trauma — until I cower,
The eyes of love heed not the beloved,
Sometimes the sweetest wine will sour,
My love.

Is there no place for the healing salve?
This perfect armor is tight and cold,
And shut from the reach of pain or grace,
Or the tenderness of together growing old,
My love...

Lost...

Soul Dust

As tributaries choke — oh miserly skies —
Roots bronze their flora and tendril deep,
Groping for the waters that deeply seep,
That verdant leaves again unfurl and arise.

Where rivers carve folds and deep valleys,
Life — opportune sprite — burgeons as water
Slowly meanders while the air grows hotter,
And painting green these fainting arteries.

The encroaching desert, willful, whittles,
Gnawing living ribbons into shreds of green,
Fraying spirit from biome and from gene,
'Til all is soul dust and anguish of angels.

These winds of wraith scorch my oasis,
Burning to char the sacred and the wild,
My waning soul is mournful and unbeguiled,
Bedraggled in dust, hands open to graces,
Yet unseen.

Lone Dying

And in the waning of the year,
Upon a cool foreshortened day,
When beasts both great and small,
Breathe slow and in a hollow lay,
Soon the advent of the solstice,
Sooner razing the fields of hay.

Leaves abandon their verdant shades,
As the trees all hold their breath,
'Til a skeletal and sorrowful lattice,
Seem to compass a world in death.
Still-life holds in the mortal time,
Abel dies, yet hope is still in Seth.

Long after leafy sinews are strewn,
Like the fog burns in the rising sun,
Here, there, deciduous do not disperse,
Stubbornly the autumnal season shun.
Torches burning in the twilight hour,
Dreams and denials of what will be undone.

Encaged by bones of a forest fellowship,
Dust of leaves dancing about the roots,
As light recedes in an ebbing harvest tide,
Straggler timbers shed with the last fruits,
Last to succumb for the fragile privilege,
Of another day denying death's pursuits,

And be
Lone dying.