AUSTRALIA

db@aceonline.com.au

Final Reunion
Dedicated to: Richard Henry William Barnes 1946 - 2000

For everyone my brother
there is this last migration:
kindled autumn leaves fall innately
to winters stroke,
continuance wafts in warm,
passage, across the stars,
beyond the residue of earths light.
In your final
fleeting flight, I knew with you,
I was carried within.
Cruel circumstance tore us apart
shattering hours, minutes
of our expansive occasions together.
And we acknowledged
the appointed seasons set on us
by our upbringing,
losses endured, our parallel lives.
Far-reaching
moments, our rendezvous'
short-lived reunion.
You traveled unclear paths
Years, to find seeds scattered,
and the trackless earth delivered
at the end.
And all that you sought in life
stood unearthed,
my brother,
family.

Untitled

where
none can touch

but self
and love

autumn leaves... grow restless.

© Copyright 7/99, David Barnes.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. 

Problematical Possession

Religious
precepts splinter,
stir, continuously east,
pitiless as the sun.
Centuries of hatred boil desert sands;
the wind's bereavement
wails on walls ...
Candles burn bright in
each intimate's religion;
and what of the holy of holies,
Jerusalem?
Darkness falls once more,
earth trembles, walls fall,
and we are moved to nightmares.
I know
the beast, in two thousand years
never annihilated, rages
rampant.
Is the hour to come at last:
swarming Bethlehem
the cradle,
and if so
What shall be born?

© Copyright 10/00, David Barnes.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.