Hireath
Only in silence does it come to you
In waves of sadness and abysmal loss.
Its memory nudges, seems overdue,
A river behind us we can’t uncross.
At night, waking in the wolf’s chosen hours,
I ache for a world that I never quite had
With kin, friends, and the strangest wildflowers,
One wraith whistling through, one kindly nomad.
Or a wondrous boat on a wondrous lake,
Half sunk in the mud, half sparking through space,
Brothers and sisters, its crew at daybreak,
A dream forever, our eternal place.
A Berserker’s Meditation
In cold, in rain, in embattlement dives,
They scare, they come at me, they threaten rout,
Voices that prod, alarm with unsheathed knives.
I duck in plain sight, my long-time hideout.
They scare, they come at me, they threaten rout:
A nature sharpened by those spiteful ways.
I duck in plain sight, my long-time hideout,
My sanctuary from man’s dread malaise.
A nature sharpened by those spiteful ways,
I wing by them, flutter with their echo,
My sanctuary from man’s dread malaise.
I dream of a future, a counterblow.
I wing by them, flutter with their echo,
Whirling on past with a darker domain.
I dream of a future, a counterblow
With sea surge and wind tears—a hurricane.
Whirling on past with a darker domain,
My words well up from the thick ink of youth.
With sea surge and wind tear—a hurricane,
Both metered and wild. All hear ye the truth.
My words well up from the thick ink of youth,
Within me the wolf thrashes for release,
Both metered and wild. All hear ye the truth:
Escape without scruple, never at peace.
Within me the wolf thrashes for release,
Voices that prod, alarm with unsheathed knives,
Escape without scruple, never at peace
In cold, in rain, in embattlement dives.
Being
Awakened to breath, queued up in a birth
That breaks through night’s deep-felt fascination,
You curl to softness of voice and heartbeat,
Then see the spread that winks in new color,
A blush which towers toward a heavy sky
To bell the serpent-predator of space
With electric bursts. The weather pauses
Its cosmic flood. Tottering with children,
A weakened house now centers the tempest
On growing these frantic siblings, these souls
Who fire mythology with new heroes.
You’re one of them, entangled in kinship,
Rooted together before the great storm
Of long separation sparks you ahead.
Bird song welcomes a wind-dried, green moment
Filled with future and final victories
Or failures, smithed in yesterday’s dreamscapes
Of polished words that seem to form themselves.
Interim Ethic
War drums reverse all harmony,
All good; the children of their wrath
And the brittle-boned, a bloodbath
Share, both fate and burst destiny.
Arrogance builds the status quo,
The sated pomp, the prettiness.
All bores brag, sans the dare, the fuss,
As they trip the curving narrow.
The other way, which sets a goal,
It lights the world in what should be,
A faith in our mythology—
A warmth of words, a mountain’s soul.
Grammarian’s Nightmare
The words themselves were rearranged
By other words that had no souls.
It happened thus: the world’s deranged
Marched forward on a bed of coals.