New Day

The sun breaches the near distant horizon.
It peeks over the ridge,
Eyeing its prospects,
Betraying its brief assignation with the night.
Goddess like it rises from its bed of darkness
Bursting full bore
Claiming the day by
Awaking and stirring the lake surface,
Which in cold hours and cloud-crowned darkness
Has been puckered and stiffened,
Driving the frost into its shadowy retreat
(Where it sulks late into the day)
Searing the ice into instant vapor,
It is swiftly
Setting those grey waters afire.

 

 

Angel Cup

Angel Cup



Damn, I cracked the angel cup.

-Don’t make too much out of it.

Geez, how am I to know that?

-Well, it’s just a cup.

Ya, but… it was a gift.

-From her?

Ya…

-But that’s history now, a long time ago, no?

Ya, but now it’s not…perfect, like it was.

-Perfect?

Ya, it fits in my hands just so, and the angel…

-Reminds you of her?

Ya, and how we were.

Damn.

Solstice Oak

Two men are felling an oak tree nearby
And the rooster tail of wood dust                                                                                          

Grinding from their saws
Is showering us in spirits.
Piece by piece
They deliver them,
Back before acorn and leaf,
Forward into the ether.
And drop them down
Bark and limb
Onto the waiting earth,
Weaving them again
Into the web,
Sending them onward
In a succession of forms,
Seeking the essential unifying light
Hard found on this
The darkest day of the year.

The Wind

The wind corrugates the pond
And strafes out a texture to this day:
Dry and wild and northerly it
Lifts up loosened leaves
Late to this dance
Then drops them back without a care
And so they sink and cascade down to
Where the light is liquid thick.
They slumber in this graveyard bed
So mired in winter’s long nights pace
Waiting for the southern breeze

Waiting cold and still.

 

 

Murder and Mercy

It is cold December
And the big fat flies
Crawl and pace against the inside window pane
Seeking some sort of release and passage
To a destination
That you and I know as their certain doom.
 
They bother me
By some memory jogged of rot and wretch
And head the registered list of things
That I must distance myself from
These vectors of the world unclean
Messengers of dark fear and terror.
 
But it is their life,
Their way unchosen,
And who am I to judge
And unilaterally arbitrate?
And so I shoo them out the door
Fool flies soon frozen,
Or dispatch them
Quickly with a swat
Of murderous mercy.
 
I am a calculating brute
Of mood and moment
And so must also register myself
On that list of the things unclean.

 

 

Frozen

The pond is giving up its heat
Slowly returning summer’s energies skyward
Into the ink black polar night.
Molecules no longer keep pace
With the liquid state and
Soon will morph into a more solid form
Creeping out into the misty waters
Like some frozen tsunami,
Slow and thick and firm
Enough to bear my weight perhaps…
And if I didn’t know better
I might just defy reason
And walk upon this watery illusion.
 
And on that day the
Fish will be looking up at me
Suspended in the dark below
Puzzled by this shift in our realities.
We both will live this frozen life
Of slant-light days
And star pricked nights:
They will pass the time and swim
While I will watch and wonder why.