dim is this next day revealed
bone grey hued in the half light
will its fertile promise be revealed
or lost last to impotent night
the quiet skies bear witness not
to what the hours ahead may bring
and as I dwell upon this thought
from naked trees a small bird sings,
her hopeful, pleading sweet refrains
raise the maudlin heaven’s still
so perhaps it’s not in vain
to wait upon this next day’s will.
poet
we watch the last star falling
what pity is there
for this melancholy isle
save the songs we sing
Joy & Pain
I beheld this dawn
the open cloudless skies
and wept
in the knowledge,
the terrifying truth
that all is
and ever will,
endless be.
Shadow Birds (again)
be silent hidden shadow birds
dark winged messengers of strife
your disquiet should not be heard
and cuts my reason as a knife
or claws unseen that holds me prey
to worries which I know not yet
hold fast your songs of woe today
and free me from those cares beset
Dusk Seductive
the dusk, seductive dusk.
what mischief it plays
with the weight of day’s end
take not to task
its willfulness
in having us believe
this is a day, new conceived
rather than its death.
Shades of Night
imperious shades of evening
we know not of their ways
save that they extinguish
all light that fills our days,
thus falls eternal darkness
inexorable deaths
no treaties can placate their calls
that bid our final breaths.
Release
I built a prison from my reason
locked and chained for all of time
conscious thought destroyed my freedom
release I found in scented rhyme
that slips these bonds with such an ease
breaks down imagined walls of stone
that I may walk in heaven’s pleasing
despite the sins I must atone.
una stagione incerta
the last rose opens
and waits for the first tear
of this uncertain season
to turn black and fade,
as in autumn’s death
is shown summer’s reason
Mad Poet?
Oh! for the madness of John Clare
to hear the angels on the air
and the music of their wings
to scribe the poetry they sing.
I yearn for blessed insanity
lost Edens in the world to see
to picture them in rhythm’d rhymes
and paint them with such saintly lines.
what fear do passing seasons hold
when such stories have been told
of beauty’s scars upon the earth
and how from death comes rebirth.
Oh! for the madness of John Clare
to mark the sacred everywhere
despite dark Hell’s corrupt intent
such souls define the heaven sent.
Weltschmerz: The Coming Tide
I dreamt of foxes
lost at sea escaping hounds
fearful of the coming tide
when not just foxes
take to cruel seas
as the hunt no more abides.
are we the fox
or are we hound
as bloodlust
runs us all to ground