North Face Glades

"The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake..."

She stopped writing, that very moment.
Snow falling on pine, white ash to cover
And silence the emptiness within.
Subconscious realization that words had lost
Their power.
Even the echoes were forced to fall on deaf ears.
Were you not ten feet from me?
Somewhere so close in those winter woods?
Yet you heard nothing.
Calling for you, lonely, desperate for your words --
Mine, hardly breathed, before they fall mute
With the weight of the falling snows.
There is beauty here, she thought,
But even that thought was barely a whisper within.
The cold and dark will come again she knows -- is coming --
And then she will be sorry for loving the sound of silence,
Sorry for imagining herself, momentarily,
Part of its life, part of its death.
Can't wait then, can't stay here
Slowly becoming a citizen of Pompeii
But it is late. Too late.
She moves on, words left to the trees and to the falling snows.
Left Powerless. And she --
She writes no more.

Cardinal Crisis

:: for Shannon ::

We missed our cue!
Then we missed our queue!
And where once there were many,
There then were few.

~

Death of a Grandmother, Birth of a Nephew

Today --
The world goes on as
The boy becomes a father and
The father becomes an orphan.
Today -- The girl, unsure, feels nothing
Conscious of the souls, one entering,
One exiting, never knowing the other.
Full of emptiness.
Today -- The daughter, distant, struggles
With the knowledge of the sister,
Searching for sorrow in the death of a mother,
Yet finding grief at the birth of a son.
And the world goes on toward
-- tomorrow.

Chaos Comes Again

Say anything but say what you mean to say -- write anything but write what you need to write. A thousand words, a million, don't stop now, write them all down. Joyous words, colorful words, sad words. Words for all the anxiety held captive in this crazy brain. Words that mean everything, that could never be said and say everything that could never be felt. Love, Tears, Joy, Games, Goals Winning Choking Crying Yelling Breathing Breaking Mistakes. Colors -- red, blue, forest green, grey, white, black. Hold my hand don't let it go. Show me the way through this crazy world. I know I can make it on my own, but I'm not sure I want to. Oh my God! You know i want only You if I could just see it clearly. But I don't want something I cant have. I gave that up a long time ago. I gave up that childhood dreaming long ago. You realize at some point that there are things you can have and things you cant and that's just the way things are. The way things are are the way things are And the way things are is not found in the stuff of dreams -- Ive been too tough to go on for nothing. Hold my hand and don't let go.

Twentieth Century Brit Lit or: Post War

There it was alone,
Crimson leaf,
In a shivering body of green.
Was this the Poet come before his time,
Flashing eyes and floating hair?
Or a prophet, fire in his veins,
And ash upon his head,
Too late to save
The world?

malcontent

All balled up inside.
Compressed and compact, the words
Crushed together, mumbled, jumbled,
Filling the fist.
Momentary freedom, perfect arch --
Swish.
A nod of the head, no more.
Who cares.

Fatal Attraction

Desperate. Desperate for another line.
For another poem. Anything new,
Not to make it new, but to renew.
To drench me in its warm spring rain
After these unrelenting winters.
There are warmer times, but they only
Make the grey less bearable.
I keep reading to find --
Something...

No, not here, lovely though, perhaps too simple;
Here in this verse? In this rhyme?
I think i may have found it this time --
But no.
Just words again, falling down in a cold rain.
Soon. Soon.
Well, write another paragraph for them.
Waiting, hoping, willing time for the poet,
Springing up, ...to give me life anew.

Serenity

Rustling leaves --
Cubes of ice,
Clinking in the tumbler --
Golden and smooth.

Child of the Sun

Child of the Sun
: a poem adapted from Carl Sandburg's Chicago

Life force for a world
Log floater, transporter
Player with laborers and the Nation's tourists
Murky, threatening, seductive --
River of the Northwest:

They tell me you are polluted and I believe them, for I have seen
Your mines under the dark mountains destroying life.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true
I have seen the backward twists and rocky falls.
And they tell me you are pitiless and my reply is: on the faces of
Parents and loved ones I have seen the tragedy of drowning.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at
This my river, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another river with its thousand feet running so
Smooth to meet the great Columbia and so vibrant, and strong and teeming,
Flinging its golden droplets a million ways down rock after rock,
Here a dappled trout leaps to meet the sun set bright against the dark soft stream;
There an angler, all boots and rod, holding back the current, cunning and quiet
As a savage anticipating the run of the buffalo
Brown-skinned,
Waiting,
Wishing,
Wanting,
Casting, circling, recasting,
Under the blue, dew all over his beard, laughing with white
teeth,
Under the awful burden of creativity, eyes shining as a young boy's
shine,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost
a battle,
Bragging and laughing that in his wrist is the pulse, and in
his chest is the heart of a man,
Laughing!
Shining the brilliant, passionate, planning genius of Man,
Half-river, striving, proud to be Logger, Hunter,
Laborer, guide and life force
to a Nation.

_______________________________
*Update: Published in Gonzaga's Reflection Spring 2009 issue. Read about it here.

Aubade

"To see God only, I go out of sight:
And to scape stormy days, I choose
An everlasting night."

As night falls,
He comes slowly, but
With an insistence beyond my ken,
Insisting on things
That when day dawns
I push beyond my limited sight
Waiting again on the dusk
When He is come again to
Harass, to caress,
To imprison, to claim,
Each time, again,
As he always does,
But only,
As night falls.