Sarah

In shadow views of battle yet to be
the final stranger beckons me. I fear
that I must now accept what I forsee;
the moment of my death is drawing near.

Oh sarah, how I want to see your face;
to touch, once more, the softness of your skin.
Though fate is sealed and destiny in place,
I long to hear your gentle voice again.

If it is true that spriits conquer death
then I will yet return to you somehow.
The winds that cool your skin shall be my breath;
my tears the gentle raindrops on your brow.

I pray you, Sarah, do no mourn me dead...
think I am gone to wait for you instead.

Beauty in the Beast

She might have seen the beauty in the beast
who prayed for her affecton for so long.
She might have heard his pretty words, at least,
if only he had written them in song.

There lived a silent poet underneath
the muted suit of armor that he wore,
but only at its death did love bequeath
the nerve to write what wasn 't said before.

A never-written sonnet is a waste.
To hold the tongue of love is near a sin.
The sweetest words acquire the vilest taste
when seasoned with a love that might have been.

His poetry, his eloquence and light
is wasted on the cold and lonely night.

Eternally

I'm haunted by a temptress;
my own true love; the sea.
My dark and stormy mistress
forever calls to me.

I often walk the empty beach
throughout the midnight hours
to hear my lover's mounful call;
to feel her awesome powers.

I'm harbor bound; I'll stay the course...
from this I must not sway.
My life, my love is needed here;
I'm duty bound to stay.

Oh, cradle of all Earthly life;
great mother of the sea,
cast of the lines that moor my heart
and let my soul sail free.

In time I shall return to you,
my final love, the deep...
I'll pull your waters over me
eternally to sleep.

Epitaph

The poems form a universe
within the writer's mind;
totality in metered verse;
infinity defined.

The poet gives his soul away
in portions he decides
with thoughts that ebb and flow to play
emotions like the tides.

He writes of love and other things
he may have found in me;
of broken hearts and Angel's wings
I've lost and found at sea...

of parenthood and common sense;
of brothers on a wall...
revisiting their innocence
and other ports of call...

An honest bard, he re-ignites
the glaring torch of truth...
with wells of bitter ink he writes
the epitaph of youth.

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 and her companion form 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.

On Easter

Enchanted by an island princess fair,
we sailed to Easter riding winds of light
and, soft, before the the people were aware,
removed her to our dark abyss of night.

Thereafter, from a time that's out of mind,
a sentry stands in place upon the shore
as drawn by Rapa Nui rendered blind
to life but for the sacred task they bore.

His stony face forever to the sea;
his charge to stand until we have released her
as bid by the forgotten race to be;
eternal shall he look away from Easter...

to leagues and leagues away and yet beyond
with all his stony brethern of the bond.

Star Sailors

I've looked into the future, looked
as far as dreams can see
at unimagined wonders and
the magic that will be.

The stars alive with sailing ships
the clippers of the skies...
all captained by cephalopods
with deep vermilion eyes.

They navigate the galaxies
and fly the steller winds
from Canopus to Betelguese
to where the matter ends...

They utilize another math
and octants made of ice
for human sums and instruments,
of course, will not suffice

to chase the moons and comet tails
to ports of call unknown;
to worlds inside a universe
where light has never shone.

Tugs

I wrote a manifest, a boatswain's list;
a log of all the promises I've made
to no one but myself; I raise a fist
defiantly to life. But I'm afraid
of weighing anchor; getting underway;
of challenging Poseidon under sail;
of running with a squall at break of day
while praying that the rudder doesn't fail.

Yet I will use the navigator's art
to plot a course through islands of despair
and I will trust the compass of my heart
to choose a heading caution wouldn't dare.

The promise of adventure yet to be...
will tug the weary Sailor out to sea.

Knights of the Breakfast Table

Said the knight to the dragon, "I'll lop off your head
and, foregoing breakfast, eat dragon instead."
Said the dragon, "You dreamer, you haven't a clue
I've hardly been trying, I'm toying with you."

And the battle resumed with sword and with flame;
the combatants concerned more with fortune and fame
than with dodging the heat or avoiding a thrust...
these equals in battle, their skills did they trust.

With a sword made of poems, a shield made of hope
here's a modern day dreamer so far out of scope
as to wish himself thither, to there he'd be willed...
to win a fair maid when the dragon he's killed.

"Don't meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunch and taste good with ketchup!"

Rivers of Time

Dinosuars waiting for stone to erode,
their skeletons covered, uncovered again;
iron that's forgotten the blood where it flowed
and phosphorous leached from a primitive brain.

Delicate sabers of soft-stepping cats
enshrouded in shimmering oceans of sand;
strata of relative sediment that's
concealing the bones of the earliest man.

Visible traces of numerous beasts;
the sum of Earth's creatures forever enshrined.
Signs of their passing won't slow in the least
the rivers and runnels of ongoing time.

"We loved the earth, but could not stay" ~ Loren Eiseley~

Upside

Upside downer, little one..
squirmy wiggle lots of fun.

Crawling, standing walking soon...
eyes that can outshine the moon.

Kisses magnet, hug collector....
tiny concentration wrecker.

Papa's Angel, happy grin...
wrapped tight around my heart again.

Echoes From a Silent Heart

Memories of memories
          imperfect and surreal;
copies made of copies of
          a loss that others feel.

Photographs and traces of
          the one who was my world;
black and white reminders of
          a pretty little girl.

Questions ask me questions
           but answers don't reply;
the echoes from a silent heart
           can never tell me why.

The gray and faded images;
            the mother she became;
what do we have in common then
            beyond our common name?

A tattered family bible holds
            a note penned by her hand;
pieces of another's past
            I'll never understand.

And if I ask the questions
            will answers that I find
restore the faded image in
            the bottom of my mind?

Memories of memories
             imperfect and surreal;
copies made of copies of
             the pain I'll always feel.

Dateline

The Scholars made a circle out of time,

divided it in pieces like a pie.

Assigned to it a rhythm (not a rhyme)

and threw it, like a net, around the sky.

But Earth does not a perfect circle make.

Imaginary lines do not lie true

so pieces of our lives we must forsake

to hold it all together as we do.

For time will push against a Sailor's bow

when heading from tomorrow on his way...

and when he sails the other way, somehow,

it steals from him a piece of his today.

All things being equinox

Magical balance in equinox lives,

if spring or the ending of summer.

Autumnal or vernal the feeling it gives

is antipathetic of bummer.

I’m hating the solstices, bulging at ends,

unequal in daylight and lack of.

I’m loving the spring and the cool autumn winds

that summer just hasn’t the knack of.

Rhythm, circadian, charges in pools

of equally lengthy partitions.

The solsticey seasons appeal to those fools

encumbered by blind inhibitions.

Autmnal and vernal and solstices; props

and sets of the solar position.

To let us know when to be plantin our crops

and tell us when we should go fishin.

A Musing

The bards desire, a whiter shade of muse,
requires that deep depression be attained.
A genuinely somber tone, the blues,
must permeate the soul and be retained.
 
You're better off a human being sad
as lack of hope intensifies the senses.  
The muse will be obscure when one is glad...
embrace your pain. Oh poet, build no fences!  

A weary writer soon divines the well
and draws his muse from willful deprivation
of sleep that he may conjure bliss or Hell;
exhaustion is a path to inspiration.


Exhaustion's good, depression's better still...
if you can manage both you're almost Will.

Of Bob and Little Bob

A little Angel, hands o­n hips, sings, loud and clear, the “sunshine” song, and when the song has left her lips she wonders how I sang along. “My ‘little Bob without a curl’ my Mother sang that song. I knew another Bob, another girl, another Angel much like you.” She doesn’t know “the rugged cross”; your other song, (she’s o­nly three). She doesn’t know she soothes my loss with timeless magic; memories… of mother singing to her boy, of Bob and little Bob… and joy.

Well

I’m crazy for other reasons
but I so love a storm
from here inside a comfort zone
with coffee, safe and warm.

And I believe in kiss for kiss
instead of tit for tat;
that dreams are love’s reality;
can you imagine that?

That words are tools of verity;
that verse extends our scope;
the heart’s a harbor built for love;
the soul, a well of hope.