POEMS
CONTENTS
Haze
Night Wind
Rain
FIRE AND STARS
Opus 27190
24 MARCH 2014
Sparks rise with crackling smoke
in circled spirals through the pines,
the glowing warmth of burning logs
warming hands and feet beside the stone ring.
With eyes it looks upward,
he the maker of the thing,
to contemplate the night,
to speak with it within its midst,
while birds around are sleeping,
and glowing eyes prowl forest spaces.
What hour of night is it?
Where is the Sun on its last and next horizon?
Where is the Moon?
Up there, where races in the Wind
a trail of broken reuniting cloud,
the Universe lies hidden, by vapors of the Earth obscured.
He knows it.
He traces in the dirt with nearby branch a rune,
recognition to the Air, the Earth, the Genius,
a companionship and an admiration.
FIRE
Opus 27259
12 JULY 2014
Old memories from ancient times,
before the mind, before man,
rekindled in sparks and smoke,
the primal crackling
that calls deeds we know not of;
great momentous, villainous, terrible;
and there for sense, perception.
Strike the match, gather kindling
within the circles of stones.
Up into the trees it goes,
among those still living, standing,
to address the stars and night,
of man's half-conscious hand.
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Opus 27770
26 September 2015
Two fish—of good size
Pan—size
Legal size!
One perch—one trout,
lying side-by-side.
The knife is taken,
to gut the first.
The point touches.
It jumps—back into the river.
Not dead!
It swims away!
Imagine!
Ten minutes out of water, maybe fifteen!
And there it goes!
Well, at least the trout is left.
That stays dead.
Better than nothing.
The perch, hook removed,
gets to live out its short life.
The one that got away is pictured on the left.
HAZE
The night wind on its singing courses
clacks the boughs and trees together
in the dark of hazy settles
through the length of mountain forest.
Patterns on the forest floor,
the leave and rocks, the wooden roof
above the lodger listening aptly
as the mists and winds play
As the dark of morning rises
still encased in shadowed vapors
waters flow from sky to brook
and wind in voices combs the land.
Gentle rustles of he birches,
piercing song that plays through spruces,
sounds the Earth its vapored humors
in the woods of dripping waters.
NIGHT WIND
Opus 27988
8/9 June 2016
Night Wind that roams the Mountains,
playing forests over cliffs
as it circles the ancient granite region.
Sighing through the boughs of spruces,
choruses in the counterpoint
sing lines and chords of hidden message.
In the shadows, dark, unseen
the spirit sings its broad cantatas
telling more profundities.
Beauty of the orchestra
takes rounds of journeys through the land
in passages of arcane language.
EXHAUSTION
Opus 28037
12 July 2016
Pounded into me the Mountain,
grain by grain to crystalizing,
so that I upon descending
have a granite rock within me.
New, a man with different minds,
the trail I walk beneath my feet
is me, the same, identifying.
Winds above, and clouds in racing,
sing my humors gained from Nature.
As the arc of sun is passing
and the house speak their colors,
clouds among the highest rocks
congeal in layers full of moisture.
What the Butterfly in standing
tells me of its explorations
seats within my inner conscious,
there to open in my dreams.
CORRIDORS OF HORROR
Opus 26543
11 December 2012
Corridors of horror
man leaves behind his wake.
Place gone and travels taken
to criss-cross the whole round of the planet
with miasmas of lurking shadow
and places that the plants will not grow.
Rivers of blood still oozing through petrification,
suspended clouds of everlasting screams,
these upon the Earth are inflicted,
sweet Mother Earth,
wise Mentor Earth,
to make It groan through Its deepest hollows
at what She has had to bear.
Places we make, we things with arms and feet,
that chill a passing person with unnamed terror,
where the clouds of the dead blot out Sunlight,
casting the land to a hollow of lamentation.
Hardly has this ambulant race
inflicted malice beyond his capacity
to make the Planet ominous,
a specially dreaded quarter
in the Solar System and the Galaxy.
Telescopes cannot see the background malice,
nor can man at close distance.
And yet, of all we've seen,
the worst come later is unimaginably greater.