A Trail Community

I flag. We rest.
My brother tires. We pause.

We ascend.
In pain the heights are scaled.
In suffering we behold the beauty.
We descend.

I flag. We rest.
My brother tires. We pause.

We cannot go on.
We go on.

sight: fore, hind, and otherwise (a working title)

Tender branch with sprouting bud.
This is mine.
It is not yours.
I claim it, you cannot.

Hulking trunk with tender branch.
This is yours.
It is not mine.
You claim it, I cannot.

Sprouting bud with hope eternal.
This is theirs.
It is not ours.
They claim it, we cannot.

On the occasion of a clearing away.

I crouch low to touch it.
To run my hands across the pebble-bare slab freshly cleared of her former glory.

Grandfather! Look what your hands hath wrought!

I crouch low to touch it.
To run my hands across a memory.

…your boots have tread here…

I crouch low to kiss it.
To press my lips softly to a memory that is not mine but now is.

Grandfather! Look what your hands hath wrought!

Untitled

In a chair.
In a room.

Careless of time.
Barren of heart.

Pregnant thoughts
aborted in mid air.

When my life
screams breathless
in the lungs
of a soul not
unlike my own.

Hope(less) and devoid
of any nuance.

pax fragilis

I watch through the storm door, smudged with a winter’s worth of cold fingers and faces, as a choleric blue jay alights noisily in my angry/contented tree.

I think he sees me. I step back from the glass.

“War! War!” he cries.
“Come and fight me. I can take the rook. I have defeated hawk and owl.”

“Please dear blue jay, I mean no harm. I am a pacifist. I will not fight you.”

The little dog comes up the walk, ready to come in.

In the violence of the storm door opening, the battle is over.

I am conqueror.

I am indicted.

a time to talk ~ robert frost

When a friend calls to me from the road 
And slows his horse to a meaning walk, 
I don’t stand still and look around 
On all the hills I haven’t hoed, 
And shout from where I am, What is it? 
No, not as there is a time to talk. 
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, 
Blade-end up and five feet tall, 
And plod: I go up to the stone wall 
For a friendly visit. 

a haiku

a shard of heaven

catches the light as it lands

softly on my nose.

because I am involved in mankind…

Genesis.

Pangaea?

Archipelago?

Judith Vestal, Clyde J. Williams, Brandon Mick, and John Donne.

a haiku

 

Barren trees splinter-

Macabre clouds of blackbirds

Stain the frost-blue dusk.

a haiku on the occasion of the dawning of a new day

Noisy little bird!

Awaken me not to life

From still slumbering.