Brantley, Byron, Bennett, Blake, Boden, Braden

Brennamae, Brynlee, Blodwyn, Brandalynn, Brooklynn

Life is:

Sad, red and green bulbs floundering in the lukewarm rain, struggling to conjure up Christmas on someone's front porch. On January 12.

The moon – is that really the moon? A dim, diffused luminescence, spayed of clarity or myth, hovering sickly on the fringes of a sympathetic cloud.

The stripped square of land which promised to be the site of a home. Promised, never delivered. Broken, crumbled clay, tufts of horse grass, terminating in a blank wall of trees. Just like life. Rocky, unvaried desolation which ends not in peace, but complete, impenetrable unknown.

Indefinable lights in the hillside opposite. Windows? Porchlights? Garages? Streetlights? A nuclear power plant lends its characteristic charm.

A stretch of silvery road – a thin sheet of liquid patina on soft, crumbly ridges, everything given a moonlight sheen. He who enters here learns the miracle of walking on water.

A teacher becomes invincible, because he is expected to be.

The apparition. Sudden, silent, stalking. A shadow? A shade. Less to be feared, more to be pondered. Is it me? Am I it?

A rich old fellow walks from his village into a nearby graveyard at sunset and sits upon a bench. Looking at the copper silhouettes of the headstones against a smoky red sky, he astutely observes: "Though he may try again and again, night after night, the devil's fires will never consume those who sleep safely hid beneath-ground." Sure enough, as he rises to leave, the sun's ember glow impotently slips below the horizon, and the grave markers immediately escape the smoldering light, like a household's evening windows all-at-once darkened into secure oblivion. But, as the satisfied fellow turns to go, something catches his attention. He starts, then gasps. A single edifice still burns with reddish lustre. Looking up, he beholds it: Perched high upon a marble mausoleum, caught in the calculating sun's last persisting rays, languishes the weather-scarred shape of a stone cross. Immediately, the man cries out, falls over dead, and the village's six church bells each toll six knells, re-echoed once apiece by the hill upon which the now-dark graveyard stands.

Handshake

The hand that grips and strains to hold

In struggle another's palm

Seizing, wresting

As if concord could be won

By a ten-second rule

Pins nothing down

But a bowstrung jaw

And shoulders stripped

Of their grooves

By powertools.

But...

From fluid fingers freely flows

Friendship fast and far

As the rivulet runs down

Easy mountain sides

Sighing,

So too does the sensitive shake

Spread sweet nurture

Through each nook and cranny

Of thy neighbor's reach.

I think I want to go to Oregon University and study Medieval Studies. If not Medieval, then Poetics or Rhetoric. I think I should take a Latin course online during my off-time with CSU.

Here is the reading list for medieval: http://english.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/MedievalReadList.pdf

Here is the reading list for poetry and poetics: http://english.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/PoetryReadList.pdf

Here is the reading list for poetry and poetics: http://english.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Rhet-Composition-SE-Reading-List2.pdf

God, I would really like to have a teaching position - doing something I like. I admit I do not deserve a position like that. I admit I do not need a position like that. I admit I need to learn through the suffering I am currently experiencing. Help me to do so, btw. But, I would really like a position where I can think and study with others. I believe you can give me a position like that. I think the one in NJ would be a good prospect. Help me to treat my current co-workers and clients well. Help me to love them and show them Christ. Help me to work hard. Help me not to be ashamed when I fail. Help me to enjoy my work. Help me to love my graduate classes. Help me to have energy to be engaged, take classes, and work full-time. I trust you to read this and to respond appropriately. Change my selfish heart.

how i wonder

whispered

softly,

darkly

down

unseen

kisses

brush my

brow

stalking

forest,

wading

stream,

sailing

midnight

ocean

gleam

zephyr's

roamings

find in

me

a para-

mour of

twilight

breeze.