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Against the powder sky, the spindles and limbs
Of gray speckled Aspens
Stand as voiceless reminders
That life has its bounds
Beyond which there are no rejoinders.

Under leather boots
Flakes of snow joined in a common lot
Creak, telling me each
Their own vision of Greatness
Unbound by this while ball.

In the quiet of my soul a voice
Mirrors both the vast hush and the minute whisper.
There, what I see: What I hear
Becomes a carol and a vision.
My voice gazes out with calmness
From my eyes, and a little wonder forms,
Like rims of frost, as does a prayer.

A prayer for some sweet peace for all
As the flakes slip down and the aspens fade.

Threads

We were given
Threads of wonder.

We were given
Lines of joy.

We were given
Hope and wonder.

We were given
Life with toys.

Dashing, wondering, finding life
O, so very like a knife.

In the light we wondered truly
If the dark ere unruly,

Should upon us crash and
Shatter, leave us with a bang or clatter.

Then benighted, friendly we
Found that life collected fee.

Now beneath the crimson waves
My soul, my heart, with stones is paved.

Board of plenty

You have laid the table well
For those who would feast on sorrows.

You have given trials richly
To those You know must grow.

Yet must this be so?
Can only throught the pain,
So very like the pains of death
The gift of wisdsom find its rest?

I am not weak, and bitterness
In me finds little consolation
That it should live or grow
Near to my chest.

Yet even so, I find the
Call to suffer and to suffer well
More cryptic than all the twists of
Gordium. Shall I rest?

I do not think that rest was made for you.
Much wisdom is your stock
And wisdom brings its sweetness and its pain.
Endure and learn.

With time, you shall, I think, find hope
To rise again.

The Arcs of God

These thinned, gossamer threads
Of time, flesh, existence, essence
Are what gifts we have from Hands
Which give, and give, yet never change.

They are lines. Gently they curve.
Space is their element, hope their breath.
They are strung from the stars of heaven.
They drape with the grace of beauty.

These soft arcs, yours and mine,
Are for each other close,
And seem by those same Hands
Meet for some congruence.

And touching once they part, tangential.
Space and time and dreams shall move between.

Reflect now upon the days thou once were given

To thee we are not given. Yet, if so be it, could the squiggle of our narrow lives, or the then annelidous turnings of unremembered hours, joys, fears, and variegated emotions, affections, dusky dreams, could they all birth something truly full of wonder? Could they struggle to conform the disenchanted pieces of forgotten quests with the new born visions of connected passions? These are the questions. To us they are given, ripe, with that small, fruit-borne smile that quaintly, sweetly says, "journey far, suffer much, but find...find in the journey itself joy enough to slake the thirst that only such a journey may inspire." The smile is not in vain. The curve upon the lips is real. The vision flickers low, but questions may beget, and offspring, not in vain, shall, with grace and time, populate my tortuous hearth.

What stones shall witness

Dead men gather too in other Lands. And there, I think, they must, as ours, Consider issues weighty with Significance.

There too when light and noise shall Split, and heaven crash, the pocked earth Shall give. And when that moment comes Who can say what stones shall witness?

Love, be strewn

Fearless grace is no excuse
To fight, to scramble in abuse.

Hope alone is not enough
If with it is all rebuff.

Care, concern, can both go wild,
And devastate the meekest child.

Yet love, I think, is quite immune
So let your life with it be strewn.

And then, when to your fathers gathered
You, with praise, shall be quite slathered.

Glastonbury

Stones do not reflect on branch of thorn descendent.
Voices echo not where lines are fallen.
Hope lies scattered 'neath matted flags.

Staff of mourners give not freedom to partake.

Yet that descent is not echoless entire.

And blades, though woven, shall permit to pass.

Imperfect/conditional

If I died but imperfectly
Would that be conditional?

Or if, in the present, my life should ebb
Would my sleep be present, future
Or imperative?

These are the questions most fitting,
But ask them not of me, for
My knowledge is weak.
A croque-mort francais,
He would know.

Hope, Peace, Vision

Hope can endure
Peace can sustain
Vision can preserve

But what can cleanse Vison clouded by frozen tears?
Or Peace corrupted by the questions of humanity?
Or Hope once lost in the embrace of darkened fields?

There the birds' sweet questionings are silent.
There the Vision gathers Peacefully, embedded with the only Hope it has ever known.
There nothing shakes,
and unperturbed
we sleep, all silent.