USA

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To Be 5

Watching them I remembered anew
what it was like to be 5,
and barefoot - grass cool and soft 
as lightning bugs lit the night.
The whisperings of birds, frogs and crickets
were so loud we could hardly hear ourselves play.
Mosquitoes bit but we didn’t care.
We spoke of important things
like slides, soft sand, and lost shoes.
And as it grew darker
the mist would roll round the trees
while we imagined it to be mystical spirits
or other strange creatures
whose sounds we couldn’t identify.
The world was as small as our own front yard
and as large as the sky.

The Bridge

I remember riding in the back
while Daddy drove, nearly	
sick from the winding crooked
little road which made
its way to the New.
This was a place on the edge 
pitted by wheels of wood
and iron and rubber.
Looking back it seemed an impossibility -
that torturous trail
would be anything
but a major throughway -
so deep it cut into the heart -
so far from ridge to ridge.
Our size may have contributed to its greatness - rocks and
coal seams, and thistle
pushing their presence into
the summer, crowding the edges -
the colors a blur
we bickered over who sat
by a window - to feel
the air and taste the green,
and stretched to catch
a glimpse of mines long
played out, curiosity
broken by the bump bump
of rails running next to the river.
When he left all I wanted
was to walk those rails
and to hear the laugh -
to taste the green.
So when I could I left
and knew little
of the long steel span that replaced
the older.

Sometimes if you listen,
closely, you can hear the wind
from ridge to ridge
suddenly there
then gone without warning.
Sometimes the spirit stays in a
place,
waiting for your return.

On Board The Bark

The coolest of shelters and watchers who wait
know Charon the Ferryman and live at his gate
like bodiless spirits that watch in the dark
of an upside down world on the edge of the bark.

In fiery formations small fragments and grains
are icicle eyes and golden remains
waiting to teach from the bones of the stone
solid yet altered and never alone.

Under the mountains nocturnally true
caught in the glow of candescent blue
where spirits are beckoned and called to the test
eternal existence or eternal rest.

Grotto like passages under the earth
enclose verberations and soundings of mirth
from winged, and creeping, and swimmers, and more
shadows in nature that passed through the door.

They wait for the glowing electrical charge
that comes when a breath is bound for the barge;
this deep zone of twilight is saved for the few
who live in the stone and hide by the hue.

Matter and time in the constant of all
infinitesimal, heeding the call
formation in clay, and silt, and lime,
on board the bark, a part of the rhyme.

Eden

Green song the soaring heart utters,
Wind yellow the silent throat cries,
Dark heaven a part of the substance,
Rich breath of star softened sighs.

Answers in changes yet fathomed,
Earth yields to incessant hum
Petals choke thorns in rotation,
Beat of perpetual drum.

Winds seed wry dusty ages,
Breaching sure newness of form,
Foam and boil muddy the essence,
Spiraling slowly in storm.

Heart of eternal existence,
bury the grieved ancient wrong,
That which seeks rhythm find balance,
Connected in clear visioned song.

Crystalline Eye of the Agate,
Arc blinded colors of air,
Bestow green song in the garden,
And paradise on mountain stair. 

Auriga

Footless upon a pedestal
a goat in her arms
and bound to the earth
She sings

an old song of people
pale as the moon -
their history in stone -
remembering capella.

Aged cedar features
have eyeless dreams
of other stars and
lost charioteers.

Turned builders of walls
each piece carefully fitted
as a monument  watching
skyward:

to the hiding place
where aromatic markers
charted a winter night’s 
refuge.

For the one that remained:
a rush to the falls
while elders slept east
standing guard.

Ancient and weathered
she remains the last
artifact of a people
forgotten.

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