overtones

listening--
some moods rise like tides
pulled to obey the moon
and  attend the  constant beauty
of her changeling face 

it can be in the descant fills
between the meaningful lyrics and my memories
it's more than  ascendant major chords
the overtones and sure rhyme end --no,
it is the space it made
and left...with you

an ancient curse

Don’t tie your precious freedom to a gun

It takes the rarest blessing shared by all

Human life - the wonder under the Sun.

When shared, life’s not a battle to be won

-together we rise, alone each must fall

Don’t tie your precious freedom to a gun

The bullet’s work done cannot be undone

It takes- unforgiving, breath’s final call

Human life - the wonder under the Sun

when armed, the weakling threatens everyone

 empowers evil to its dreadful haul

Don’t tie your precious freedom to a gun

Like ancient curses passed father to son

-the cult of killing calls in honey-ed drawl-

Human life - the wonder under the Sun.

 For love is never late nor over done

And life offers no guarantee or recall

Don’t tie your precious freedom to a gun

Human life’s the wonder under the Sun.

The snows of March...

... they fly to ground
riding gusts, they dress tree limbs,
and coat the world in a cotton-like fluff.
Then lying soft and gentle as winds and fall subside
The muffled quiet it brings, rises to swallow
background sound, in the ebbing
of snow's ride from cloud to swirl

It clings so tenderly and complete
it is as if it knows the chased tick-tock
towards tomorrow's warmth

I watch and an eager feather covers my lash
as a once and unique snowflake
dissolves into a common drop of rain

I speak a thought to the snows of March
"Hold tight, you will not be here very long..."

I feel that sly and knowing smile rise then fade away
as I realize thus and slowly, the snows
have whispered quietly this very same thing
to me

ever present chance

Laughter can flow and fall into air
seeming vapor and mists, in my mind's eye
it is a cascade among elegant cliffs and trees-
an already beautiful scene, made more beautiful.
Laughter gathers into mighty streams
and collects to grow and carve to sea
like deep rivers, it carries much along the way.

Tonight, I look into the eyes, across lives
and over generations; I see
the gifts of mother to child and child to
fresh springs of human spirit that
the world so badly needs.
For it is tears of time, that wets seeds
that sprout full-blown into possibility.
In boundless and deep forests it covers vast tracts,
 fills all emptiness, and make the ever present chance
that sweet breath inhaled  becomes
laughter on tireless wings.

a moment of love

Had the Rose
a reach for greater beauty
or had a dream sought a greater vessel
than the ship of the spirit
in dark and passing night
they  would occasion
a rush of vanity
and sins of excess.

In the eyes of lover,
beyond the fires of passion
and the moon-sparkled web
of yesterdays weaving into tomorrow,
there is only selfish lust
of an invisible man,

as when shadows pretend life
and the sun soaks into artifice.

Time is a test of many things
but it cannot contain
the value of a moment of love
nor its boundless spark of hope.

idyl spring

 the young girl
wide-eyed curiousity...
watching cats mate

a single robin-
amid a flock of graeckles
songs lost in a throng

in spring gusts-
a woman's short skirt...
finding my lost thought

an April moon

Swelled low, gliding in the east,  a glow
that swallows budding trees and spike-top spires
to redefine a man made forest adorned
by bare branched signs of spring.

I have seen you before but never
through the thoughts of this day
the seeds of doubt that fly full born
were not yet blossomed in that season last
you were the harbinger of a reluctant winter's end

I hear the same songs, and can clearly see
they too mean so much more, and time has this;
a way of showing the softened grip we have,
as we squeeze harder to hold each passing day

and you, golden chariot
of a high ride across night sky
of tomorrow you speak not, and it is well...
for you are enough, in beauty

to transform darkness into
fascination with a gem.

unbridled path

I have grown distant from the sky,
from the inviting mysteries of faraway fires
the teeming night of the past that visits
fresh to the wondering eye and taunts
imagination for its difficult reality-
travelers from the time before
the world on which I stand.

It is the minutiae, the bacterium scale
of tedium that keeps a greatness at bay;
the way a puddle can keep the man from
a destined step, or the way a breeze can alter
a life-altering thought, and as a wisp of smoke
curls to reprise a precious memory.

All the world can seem a folly when
days begin and end in a circle with no particular gain
and the distant sky, even in memory, whispers;
it is waiting, holding my place
upon its unbridled path to forever.

only occurs in Spring

I know it is the angle of the Earth

The tilts of her chin as if she smiles

To her favored star

I know that the soils lie in cold wait

For the intensity of beams to spur

Tiny life onto greatness

I know…

Yet there is mystery and fantasy

The orb in a brighter blue gown

And how the moon plays a trick

Upon air and sea to mesmerize into forgetting

A return to used-to-be’s that

Never were; I know.

All the pale blue wonder

Sun-splashed hills turning green

The songs of gurgling streams

Enjoying a bounty of cold clear melt

And underground swelled by chill and freeze

Releases like a pent-up lover

Last seasons seeds need no more than

A few tender days, yes, I know

It is the land and air, and waters

And yet, I also cannot deny,

That I know

It is a part of me, a seed of hope, a rivulet

rising to a rush, the hunter’s lust in a rising trout,

a pile of noisy crisp leaves

gathered by the winds, and tapping, tapping

There is part of me yet-

That only occurs in Spring.

Shared in the morning

I left the music inside my head

on lips that simply tried,  it died;

The heart ached to find the lost…

I left the music inside my head

as my body danced across the light,

And even when my words took flight

they could not stray far away.

The heart is like a warm welcome nest

trying to hold on to all the rest of the joy

We shared in the morning

And then the music inside my head

Began to stir and swirl

Until the world seemed ready

And then the waters fall,

the comets flash,

And the moon was a ball of gold.

We found the music inside my head

And shared it like a precious bread

Divided but never diminished

Until every heart...was truly fed

By the music inside my head

and joy we shared in the morning.

je suis...

When men pretend to greatness
as if to be gods, they diminish life
we do not worship the smoking gun
we simply fear it and dread
the fracture of reason that stands behind it.

There is a poetry of grief, and it sounds dull chords
like muffled drums and slow steps to fresh mounds;
dust of stars are we, and like them, we burn bright and die.

We have fire within and send out our special light;
it is life - a glory and celebration.
It is the precious gift and we know it
by sounds of laughter when we hold it, and the
slow roll of tears when it passes.

When men pretend to greatness
and wear the mantles they make
the petty godliness they create...they can only
make life vanish; they become invisible to the eyes
for we forget fear, it moves away
like the burn of sun through clouds.

We forget makers of fear...they are as the dust
of forgotten dust; we remember the joys
and the gifts of happiness.
Fear flies in an eye blink, it does not keep us;
for We are eternally bound
 to those we Love

Guided…

A rainbow in the clouds,

A fond and nearer imitation

of the distant winter sun

and harsh glares fill the glass

stings the eyes as I pass on a guided journey

In a day when the weight of air

bears down, and laughter floats close,

as if bound to fly a small piece of sky,

and the eyes take in no more than needs see

Signs are everywhere when the weight of care

Sharpens the senses, and the connected air-

from the first breath to now-

come full-flower in the fertile heart.

The touch of unseen hands

Assure, that the path is right,

and the courage of the last step taken

will be found before the next… The road

grows smooth in the hard places;

It rises again, to meet my weary feet

a deeper slice of sky

Crowding against the cold
skin gathers itself to contain inner heat.
A prickled outward skin to keep heat within
and the world notices little
of the battle in brittle layers of life.
It is an ordinary winter day, and yet the sun
betrays the golden face of warmth;
aslant and through a deeper slice of sky,
we tremble and yearn for calendars to turn

faster

No matter the width of the world
one only feels the nearest inch, and in an endless bound
of space and time, sitting at sea's edge
it is the ship launched by the winded breath
of the mind's own sky, takes the onward path
to nothing and back, and all along the way,
creation in each inhale, filling forms
of bubbled galaxies in each passed breath

slower

than the pulsing light of life, can it become
a snail foot, when missing the reason
for the next step, when the only fear
is that tomorrow arrives before I can repair
today.

orbit slowly

Sometimes surprised at the brilliant full moon
as if I should always know
when she pulls my eyes to sky and dazzles
in a swarm of memories, stirring hopes
as the scars that remind of the fights I made
the flights taken to rise above the tedium of passing night

She honestly replies when asked of the meaning
of every task, that press down like fogs
falling beneath the cloak of darkness
when cloudy vapors rise like ghosts of dreams.

Sometimes surprised by the pristine beams
that fill the evening yet leave it empty still,
and waiting to be filled by apology for the missing
and the vow to be...a presence in the present.

I do know, for I can hear the tinkled glass retort
when beams fall like icy petals, parting the cold.
Near ground where I orbit, slowly; held by the gravity
of tomorrow, and still I am sometimes surprised,
how she...is the moon.

loving...

Hidden in an un-noticed breath,
within a soft exhale and eye blinks;
it was there in touch of smooth cloth to fingertips,
and in a barely-felt brush of your close passing.

Aloft on a wispy movement of air
stirred specks and motes in a sunbeam;
there too in the uncounted movement
of fingers through hair, or the
lost point of a stare to the nether of thought.

Floating like the winged hungers on rising drafts
when the world holds all of her life, 
there is only the  patient search for a final fall.
It is in the sullen glows and joyous sparks
that ignite small fires unto great rebellions.

The spirit is never still, for it is filled
by an essence and an untamed flow;
 it is love, in every part of us,
 and through its ceaseless inner voice
existence is loving...

pot shards

Drifted through yesterday
and the way I made-up many days past,
and reworked them to suit the new filter
placed over the distillation of time;

I drifted further, into the places
beyond the easy handles of yes and no.
Falling softly into places
where fears and loving make crossed currents
that pull me under.

Then I learn once again
to begin to breathe inside bubbles;
I find courage to renew
the birth-time notion to chew water,

and in this mix of twelve and six-
inverted hours and powerless to stop-
the urges that spring forth.

I stand in greater need of forgiveness
but there is no one here to absolve;
all are implicit and indebted-ly involved,
totally invested in the seamless dream.

When it is all done, and we enter
the lasting silence of sleep, then
life becomes the broken-pot shards;
the undisturbed dust surrounding them
make a picture...for the final cover.

between you and the world

Speak to me as you speak to the stars

Knowing full the answer, yet you ask

Hear me in the silence that rises
in the spaces between you and the world
noticed like the last dripping spill of rain
the noiseless call that stills all thought.

See me as you see the face of the river

Giving form to unseen wind, holding

The soft shoulders of the moon

Know me as you know the voice of your mind
patient and forgiving of all things
eager for the rush of love

And feel me as you feel a breath

Touching your lips in a slow exchange

Of  warmth…

steam ...

Lost in a thought- I'd borrowed
from her lips and eyes
and the mist from the tea
fills all I can see, a surround
and bound all presents

I drift into a moment before a kiss...
melting away, all the bustle
words they say sift through
a prism, and you are the anchor
upon this  softly rolling sea,
as mists, simply mystify....until

the room rises from fog
walls remove  sky, solidify
faces say who and why
skin tones reply  to my searching eyes
and I can only wish this momentary bliss
to stay...just this way

morning light

Red flame hooves
lead across the eastern sky
cloud and sunrise engage in a race to light
Yet dim, the sky yields slowly in this kingdom-
a dark-framed fury

Swept by night winds, awaiting early eyes
a thrill of spilled sun fire on the paling canvas of dawn
and in the blinks that separate the long view
I imagine vaunt chariots
riders and the rains of thundered earth;
they pretend across the bend of a new day
such an ancient glory

moon ascending

Into the night,
up into the bright, glowing face
golden moon ascending
rising from jealous trees
that keep you from me and give
faint stars-remnants of even greater age-
a dim and temporary stage.

I feign surprise, that so many wiser men
have said this too, it is something
in you,  a trust, a sensed confidence...
a wish to share that impels thought-laden breath
to bare wit and heart

If only I could keep one petal
of this bright flower near, vagrant
darkness would disappear;
I would finally hear the magic
in sounds of moonlit notes, and fallen
crystal spines of life