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You Touched Us Open

A butterfly surprising me
To grace my palm so I could see
The radiance of life’s sweet smile
Burn through the haze of my ennui
And melt my heart so gratefully
In your redeeming love for me

But I know you’re that kind of grace
That weaves through life at your own pace
So I walk on fear’s sharp knife-edge
To dread unknowns perhaps to be
Within love’s glow of openness
And shadows of a heart greedy

To close you in would crush your glee
With open love you’d float away
To keep you here would kill beauty
My heart will break the day you flee
You’ll wander off as sure you will
Into this world with wonder fill
Sweet butterfly to float so free
Through sunbeams of aged memory

A butterfly surprising me
To grace my palm so I could see
The radiance of life’s sweet smile
Burn through the haze of my ennui
And melt my heart so gratefully
In your redeeming love for me.

I’ll think of you in future times,
Rememb’ring such great love was mine
And grateful to recall just how
You helped me flower into now
You flit to find the nectars sweet
Of every heart you grace to meet

You’ll wander off as sure you will
Into this world with wonder fill
Sweet butterfly to float so free
Through sunbeams of aged memory
Forever linking minds ‘cross time
Sweet visions for those left behind
Our souls infused with peace now see
You touched us open to be free

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Forever and a Day

The opposite of death is love.

Come now sweet darling
Don’t be that way
The world may be changing
Fire ’n ice have their way
But don’t you be fretting
For come here what may
I’ll be your lover
Forever and a day

We’ll shiver in winter
We’ll sweat in the heat
We’ll drink the brown water
We’ll live without meat
Your young skin will toughen
Under hot suns
Your young brow will furrow
As years have their run

We’ll find our right living
Beneath ashen skies
We’ll always be yearning
For young dreams’ reprise
The world’s always changing
Uncertain to be, but
With my arms around you
You’ll always be free.

For our world is burning
Its green hopes lost smoke
As our hearts are learning
To hold strong as oak
The wars will be fearsome
And peace will elude
But love for each other
Will give fortitude

So come now sweet darling
Don’t take on so
Though our world is changing
Our love will grow
And we smiling through
Our sweet time alive
For each we’ll be lovers
Till forever dies

And this world will crumble
Freeze, burn away
Our lives flicker out
Must happen one day
The red suns are burning
The grey moon’s cold hope
Lost children are turning
From fear’s lonely yoke

But fret not my darling
For all things must pass
Yet there is one constant
One thing to last
Despite all the grieving
Our love is so brave
The smiles of whose being
Will live past the grave

We are so lucky
Past mere survival
We can both dream
Of nature’s revival
Mourning the children
Lost in the floods
Whose stilled lives are bubbles
Released in the bud

Memories wistful
And not a lament
Hearts filled with love
And spirits unbent
The loss and the lack
Cannot kill the soul
Where love for another
Has once taken hold

We’ve been so lucky
In this life so graced
Though our world is changing
And we’ll be displaced
Amor y candela
La noche nos daré
Corazones contentos
La vida brillaré

So fret not my darling
For come now what may
I’ll be your lover
Forever and a day
Yes, our world is changing
And our time will pass
But through all the dreading
Our love will last

Come now the winter
Come now the drought
Lost is salvation
Of that there’s no doubt
The fire and the ice
Will each have their way
But through all the changes
Love constant will stay

So don’t you be fretting
Come now what may
You’ll fill my tomorrows
Like my yesterdays
Through all of the changes
One constant will be
That I’ll be your lover
And you will live free

Come now my darling
Send fear away
Though our world is changing
Our love will stay
Don’t you be fretting
Your sweet grace away
We will be loving
Forever and a day

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Soar Hawk Soar

I walked beneath a freeing sky
A soaring hawk wings thoughts up high
The calmed remembrance of old dreams
And clouds aglow in silent streams
That drift on by the mountain peaks
Of stories I will never speak
The light of day unfurling space
Illuminates my winding pace
Unshadowed hills of grit and green
The finest landscapes I have seen
A fading wake of memories
That seep out softly as eddies
All so common and all so mine
Connecting ever each ‘cross time
By light on silent distant themes
Adrift alone on warped time’s seas
Beyond horizons of each one
So mind hawklike soars to the sun
To look to where experience ends
Perhaps to catch a glimpse friends
So very long ago with you
When warmth was shared between us two
Till now forgotten urgencies
Cast us adrift to families
That drew our lives out as we’ve seen
Remote from those that now are keen
As my regards go out so fleet
With hope your journey has been sweet
For mine was good despite the storms
And I survived to now inform
This freeing sky with soaring hawk
And see descending light past dark
To bask so warmly as so true
Reflections burnish life anew.

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Teetering on the Edge

The dead that from us borrow
Are buried in their schemes
The children of tomorrow
Are left without their dreams

We see the steaming kisses
Of fire and the sea
The long bleak shoreline hisses
With all that used to be

The victors celebrating
Within their hoards entombed
Tomorrow wander searching
Beyond bunkers of doom

Below a dusty red sky
From waterless burnt hills
We peer far out and ask why
We let your false pride kill

The air now ghosts of flowers
The sea now grains of grit
The green that once was ours
Our dawn that once was lit

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Your Love Is My Challenge

I must say that “I love you” two hundred times a day
And every single one of them is heartfelt and true
I must say that “I want you,” oh a hundred times too
For every minute every day I so yearn for you
There must be other ways I can show you how I feel
Besides bouquets in hungry hands whispering appeal
What more can I you offer, and what else to accept?
How can my art and passion grow much more love for you?
Can I ever open up the mystery of time?
So you can ramble through the weave of your dreaming lives
Can I hope to lead you back into that hidden spring?
Trembling in that flow until we melt into the light
You touched me and I came alive so reborn with you
Now I open up this world so your love flowers through
I rise to meet the challenge of championing your love
With open heart ’n spirit full my vision clears to you

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Looking Back I See

I could’ov lived a poet’s life
And rove throughout my world of dreams
But wives ’n kids would not’ov stood
For unplowed rows ’n nights unseen
Hitched-up horses ’n dogs on leash
Give comfort more than mottled gleams
Of moonlight shadow rippling ‘cross
Wild tomcat’s wandering night screams

My ignorance as longing’s fear
Threw chains o’r artist caperings
With love and safety held so dear
One’s spring and sparkle cooled and stilled
For unburnt candles casts no light
Nor wax-drip sears the hands it’s held
But blaming others I cannot
For all my grasping at the wind
To root unlikely chance to ground
As time invisibly slipped by

When freedom’s moored to throbbing life
It’s owning choices one has made
Both all the triumphs and regrets
The breath and beating heart passed through
That stream of all life’s incidents
Of thoughtless words and wordless thoughts
The rising smoke in nights forgot
The mist burned clears oblivion’s light

Trust can be a rock secure as
Happiness so sweet drifts by
Each man’s an island on his own
Each woman is all hurried seas
The randomness of time and tide
Lap eddies onto shores of mind
A poet’s life must always be
Lost starlight glinting on the sea
Harmonic chaos elegant
Is understanding clarified

Money is all evils’ flower,
And evil is all money’s root
Commodifying, life’s reduced
To lowest cost priced highestmost
In great lovelorn America
Misled by those who’d make you see
The poetry in guillotines
Why weaken truth, dull clarity
Placating insecurity?

Poetic thought dissolves at last
In old hens’ prattling done and drowned,
So Dylan Thomas died one night
From swelling of the brain infused
And so doth booze insight expand
The oft crabbed musing consciousness
A failure I would bound to be
If questing life eternally,
But be assured this won’t be so
For I’ll be free curmudgeonly

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Mister Yes-Know and Mistress No-No

People live, people die
People laugh, people cry
People love, people lie
People lose, people fly

Don’t say what I don’t want to hear
Don’t do what I don’t want to see
Don’t think what I don’t want to know
Don’t feel what I don’t want to be

Passive-aggressive mister co-dependent
Obsessive-compulsive mistress unrepentant
Acute anticipatory anxiety ascendant,
A mystery inevitably uncomprehended

Sometimes my art is of quality high
Sometimes my art is of quality low
However it crosses the public eye
I’m always delighted, I love it so

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Coiling Oak Smoke

Dewdrop jewels on the berries of spring
Golden grain waves in the fresh wind that brings
Crystal fresh rains that wells once again fills
And moistens the fields, the woods and the hills
Vibrant green shoots coat with radiance our land
Nature’s benev’lence again is at hand
Clear light infuses warm breath through the trees
Dispelling the mists by dawning degrees

Our gardens now lush emerge from shadow
Birds rustle and flit by rivulets low
Mayhaps our boatmen will hook us some fish
To grill tonight for a savory dish
Maybe our cider cooled down in the creek
Will loosen spirits to merriment seek
Round the oak fire that pulls us all in
As our tribe of foundlings now becomes kin

Let the young children seek sparkly rocks
Treasures and playthings their dreams to unlock
Delighting in games with imagined friends
Out in the clearings and where the beach ends
Hiding and seeking and scurrying ‘round
Learning each corner of our tribal ground
While we tend to patching houses and clothes
To keep out the rains and cold wintery blows

In afternoon balm I’ll auger flute-holes
And string my guitar to serenade those
Who ring round the fire as dusk closes in
As we rim the warmth that centers our being
And I might think back to times long ago
When my world froze up and melted like snow
And then burnt away in long hopeless wars
When all that I was became nothing more

We each disappeared into private ends
Abandoned alone by fate and by friends
Emerging alive by luck some would say
Finding each other by chance day by day
Intimate strangers now braided as tribe
Castaways now on this earth that abides
Each guarding mem’ries of those that they lost
Each guarding a soul or’whelmed by grief’s cost

Tomorrow I take Young Buck up the hill
To teach him the bow and of deers to kill
We’ll seek cedar stalks to make arrow shafts
Talk about fletching and archery crafts
To ready ourselves for hunting to come
When fall chills the days and fog shrouds the sun
In time he’ll move off with borns of his own
As I once had before being alone

When young Buck’s become the man he must be
I will be feeding my gone away tree
Returning my spirit to these deep woods
Content I suppose I did what I could
We old men and women work so to fill
Young bellies with food and young lives fulfill
With savory scents coiled up in oak smoke
That bind us together as tribal folk.

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Night and Day, Being and Nonbeing

Matter, energy, space and time: the entirety of physical existence. Einstein unravelled their truth: they are all entwined, a four dimensional yin-yang, the image of gravity. But, what gave him pause that he could never fully overcome was the yin-yang of existence and nonexistence: quantum reality. And that is what we live within and are: matter, energy, space and time, existence and nonexistence, flickering on and off in rhythms seen and unseen, known and unknown, felt and unfelt. And consciousness, like gravity, is manifest through that dazzle while itself untouchable — a void — infused deep within us, the motivating core, the suns of our solar systems of individual being: life.

I step outside my warm bubble of house-air into the cool fresh oceanic night, which sucks my awareness out to the farthest reaches of its fathomless inky blue-black vacuum, punctuated by pinpricks of light beyond the frontiers of experience, whose inverted depths are a dark crystalline silence, the infinitely dissolved horizon past the tenuous haze of our shared breaths with green life lush with the fragrance of August flowers eddying through the living tangle of Earth’s surface in my forested canyon laden with ancient expirations cooled and moistened to sparkling renewal.

This velvety opaque transparency pulses with drones by crickets and unfolds unseeable vistas of distant sound whose tides are brought near, washing resonantly through me and absorbing me into the totality of this timeless sequence of unthinking scintillating instants, pinpricks of existence flashing out of an eternal sea of nonexistence like glints of moonlight on ripples of a four-dimensional ocean, the unbounded immersion.

I breathe in my share of this pregnant unconscious and sense the capture of two or three molecules released millennia ago in the funeral pyre of that great poet’s expended form, its brief journey of genetic transport finished as mine will soon enough be, and I embed that molecular poetry into my blood and sinews until its time for release comes with my organic disintegration into pure fleeting memory. Coyotes howl with bell-like clarity through the dark effulgence, and my moments of eternity come to rest for this night. So, I turn into my house-bubble for sleep.

Dawn fog in the canyon: I am looking at the sun just rise over the crest of the ridge, and light pour through the fog into the canyon, making it glow as it flows up the stream-bed and through the trees along the hillsides, with blue sky above, and birds darting through the panorama framed by my vision, the warmth of the rays descending into my body as I face before it, immersed in a cloud of light, evaporating. A bird chirps. Mist rises. The ground of the forest lights up. Leaves emerge glistening green from their silhouettes. The voices of the forest call to each other, silence fades into the light of day. Rebirth. I am who am once again.

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21 December 2019