Contemplation 1

I wish my words would sparkle bravely,
Bronze emblems blazened on a field of blue
or evening clouds underlit with citrus sun.

But I look up to see my phrases
hang swollen, charged with fire from fearsome skies
that glowers dark and explodes in darker thought.

Oh light that crowns the highest treetops
Sweep down to save me from this cavern speech!
and lead me blind by the hand to thy sweet source.

Aaaaaaaaaand–
                    Ripple.
Light and lost,
as though upon the water's face
A thousand mirrored deeds recall the one
–Plunk! that fell,
Itself the product of a breeze
(Such breezes sometimes ease the leaves
to loose their grip upon the trees–
those leaves then fall to prick the seas
or ponds)
without point or plan.

Silly me.
Afloat, adrift, a washed up drip
Dropping down to stir the pot
–and ignoring the recipe!

Oh, was there ever such a thing?

A Highway Ambulance

red lights

a rocking clip

alarming drivers near

to shy away respect or fear

ignored I stare inside the windows rear

enraptured racing right beside the siren scream

within the while a wavelike mountain surges up and down

again again again the gurney shrinks beneath the blows of life

as reaching in and grasping out the drama beats itself to senseless black

and I speed past
because I had somewhere

to be.

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.