Wages

“In timeless magic, lofty trees don blankets made of virgin snow…” This imagery is sewn to please in ways that only poets know. Inquire of nature, “What’s the time?” and watch the day sink into night, but hear the image in a rhyme and see without the need for sight. For life and love and beauty’s sake, at banquets spread in poets minds, of metered sweetness men partake in verses of the many kinds. What then could poet’s wages be but joy and peace… and sanity? .

Another Path to Sundown

Another path to sundown; the cowboy rubbed his back and thought, with love, of rum relief tucked safely in his pack. Thoughts, wistfully, of father tread lightly through his mind; of going home to dash or prove the truth of what he’d find. On reaching the arroyo he reined a weary mount and, from his vest, took out to read his mother’s grim account. Another path to sundown though prudence can advise the prodigal who rules the soul will call with distant eyes. In natures own cathedral, beneath the milky way, he made a vow to reach his home before another day. Another path to sundown; the peace for which he’d yearned; he wasn’t home and yet he was the prodigal returned.

Axle

Time is many wheels, revolving slowly,
along a central spine;
an axle. Is it accident or holy,
this universal line?

The stars exist in circles never-ending,
arrayed in common space.
The paradox? The view of time depending
upon the viewers pace.

The Earth, with her companion, forms an axis;
an ordinary wheel.
Man, and this is where the parallax is,
has pride enough to feel...

that time and space revolve around his need;
the need to understand.
And, strangely, time now seems to be. Indeed…
unfolding as if planned.

Sweet Abyss

That life will run this unrelenting pace
until the final syllable of time
does not, by any trial or judgment, place
an urgency on this bouquet of rhyme
that re-declares my love; that would describe
the sweet abyss that slowly drew me in;
the amber liquid love I yet imbibe;
the kiss of life that dares me, kiss again.

When life with you is over; verses read.
When words no longer form within my soul.
When light has gone and all is dark instead,
my love will yet remain as ever, whole--

as long as lives the power of the quill;
as long as there is verse and longer still.

Nikki in her cool hat.