Changing Wind

Catch the wind within a hand,
Never let it leave,
Like a thousand grains of sand
Unallowed to breathe;
Favors it will have to get,
Just to stay inside;
Start a trial, take a bet
How long it will abide.
Whisper in its flying ear,
"Hear the autumn come?"
Soon you'll have no loss to fear
Though its voice is dumb.
Catch it, make it stay for life
Feel it every day
It will be a kiss and knife
When the skies are gray.

From the Drought

I think if I should see the sea,
Then I should also see my soul;
An item both inane and wise,
An ornament both deep and dull.
The foaming breakers are my hopes,
At times they were so commonplace,
But now they draw themselves away
And disappear without a trace.
Should storms arrive, I will agree
That they reflect my downward thoughts;
But I should not be prone to change
The rains that keep me from the drought.

Better Things

Make room for little things,
The lovely things, the sweet good things,
The soft white rain in early dusk,
The butterfly in newborn spring.
Make room for little things,
Those things that soon will fade away;
The laughter that your child brings,
The baby cries that won't long stay.
Though the world is often bitter,
Sad with time and torn from peace;
Make room in your soul for better
Better things will never cease.

Footprints

Should I seek the rocky shore,
Torn with the skeletons of the sea,
Ravaged by waves from the ocean floor,
Flecked with the blood from a coral tree;
I should find my soul's dust there,
Thrumming and throbbing within the skies
Spread over captain's nests and men
Laboring hard under light and tide.
Creatures scuttle through damp black homes,
No one remembers their island place;
Such is my mind in the churning foam;
A footprint in sand that leaves no trace.

Rain Wolf

In a flash of light,
In a thunderous crash,
Alone,
Against the rain's sharp lash;
His teeth a gleaming white,
His fur
A shade like bark
With flecks of night.
A single drop of glittering blood
Upon his tongue,
And on his claws, the sliding mud
From valleys, thickened with the flood.
What cave he came from,
No bird knows,
What mountain, ringed with diamond snows,
What creek he quenched his endless thirst...
Are only known by the grounds he cursed.
Pinnacles crumble, boulders slide;
But his bold black heart may never die.

Dove

Like silks in the air,
Like pods on the breeze,
Our final words
No eye can see.
The things we said,
Or never did
Are but the sun
When day has fled.
The clouds are dead
The hours gone,
I listen for
The notes of dawn.
I miss your heart,
The heart I knew
The dove that took
Its life and flew.

Power of the Star

A beacon of light; it brings one home,
A song perhaps for only some:
The innocent, the sweet, the still;
The patient on the thorny hill.
Pure sun, I know thee from afar,
Thy shining hair, thy gleaming star...
And in thine glow I lie my head,
A flawless, ample, burning bed.

New Year

Within the dim confines of a lost tomorrow,
The heart finds a home to hide its sorrow,
In bright gold lanes traced warmly with light
In songs that still linger from birds in flight.
Footsteps make patterns in snow from the past,
Cold things, and dead things, and things that don't last;
People and places ringed harshly in rain
Dreams that the mind views with crippling disdain.
Present paths twist through the soul like a thread,
Unread, unspoken; by consciences spread,
Lips meant for moving, smiles and frowns,
Rivelets or rivers, mountains or mounds.

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.

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.