Friday, August 22, 2014

Brother

The lights from the plains fade in and out,
They scurry through weeds dancing beams in the sun,
They seem to belay every memory and dream,
Every countless bright space, every stone mute and dumb.
The linnet is singing high up in the tree,
The bending white willow on banks thin with foam,
The meadows around her are shaken with white;
Red poppies are scattered in threads from the loam.
A violet is dead on the ripest of graves,
The lyrics of breezes blow steady and slow;
The darkness is coming, the last shadows running:
The final sounds drowned in the brook's tepid flow.

Friday, May 9, 2014

White Wings Silhouette

Oh, hope, white-winged, clear-eyed,
Burning with a dream that never dies,
Fresh-faced, pure with unnamed bliss;
Against the rocks your clarified dyes
Threw themselves, bloodied with full regard
Of what the world had lost.
From scorching eyes you let loose torrid streams,
The heat of such were blacked with hellish cost;
The ground seemed sighing with a sweet relief
When you had gone to change your bed.
Still---even now----the wind is warm;
Oh fading hope, so newly born, so newly dead.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Railroad in the Rain

The world is full of thick curtains of rain
Windows soaked and drooping,
Curtains sagged and bowing.
In the yard, a solitary train
Has stopped upon its tracks
Waiting for lightning to distance itself;
And the conductor breathes a thin breath
Into the moist air
One breath less
Then the soggy gray bird perched near.
Mud boots, cold shoes, thin pants, dim thoughts
Sitting in one car there
Waiting for the rain to end,
Looking out past track and bend.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Star

In the thin air, the darkness surrounds
Thick, encompassing, endless,
Save a single star of hope in the earth's revolving rounds,
An entity entirely friendless.
It is the brightest in a sea of velvet black,
It is the sharpest glitter in the deep,
It follows every shadowed crack,
A dream within the reaches of one's sleep.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Rainbow Wood

Over the branches of a fluttering forest,
When winter has bowed her head for good,
A dun meadow is beginning its firsts of blossoms:
Painting the air like a rainbow wood.
Swallows, and robins, and larks go winging,
Bright, happy dots in a fresh sea of green,
Crickets, and and small silent spiders go creeping
Newly emerged to impress on the scene.
Thick, heady scents loaded thickly with pollen;
Deep, languid winds that flow heaving with breath;
A single foam brooklet that jumps through the thicket
And wakens with song all the cubs from their rest.
The dawn is still breaking, the spring still unveiling,
The does still have yet to bring fawns to the world,
But in the soft throes of the shadows and sunlight
The wild, flush roses grow sweet and unfurled.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

First Lights

Dim lights in the morning,
Filtered in grass,
Gray shadows of trees,
Roads covered in brass;
Thin lines from the rooftops
Peaked doorways of gold;
Mushrooms with patterns
Scattered over their mold.
A train blowing lyrics,
Another goodnight
Before the sun's rising
Before the first light.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Song

The summer sun flew by me,
I knew not where it went,
Only the snow now hounds me
The bane December sent.
I used to dream in summer,
I held him, side by side,
The August moon before me
A still unmarried bride.
The breeze came by me softly,
The petals of the rose
They brushed my spirit gently
As grasses brushed my toes.
There was a wind of silence,
There was a hope of sky,
The light was not behind me,
But triumphed, wide and high.
Within this lovely novel
I scarcely could contain
A feeling of belonging
That now seems but a shame.
Return to me, dear summer,
Come wandering from the spring
Leave icicles behind you
Let loose, give voice, and sing.