Break, oh endless winter
Flaunting your precipitous splendor
Freezing the skeletal soul of man
Excessively boasting beyond your span
Bringing your brutal fist to ground
So ice and snow and sleet abound
You have tarried too long in this land,
And we are bowed low under your heavy hand
Watching our fleeing breath dissolve
As our prayers, the sticking point of our resolve,
Waiting still, for the thaw to save
While you turn our meadows into graves.
Tag Archives: Poetry
Cold as the Grave
Only the Lonely
Nothing to offer,
So little to give,
Overextended by every
Last day I have lived
And would you forgive me
If I sank in deep?
Latching on secure
Where there is no clasp,
Belittling the future
To exploit the past
And I cannot grasp the reason
I remain another season
I wait for a beacon to guide me.
Nary Go Round
Finite are the times
The carousel goes round
A painted horse is deaf and blind
It can neither hear the sounds,
Nor cast the vigilant eye
Along the sky, nor ground.
It cannot twirl forevermore,
Each ride has a start and stop.
Once you climb aboard,
And once you climb atop,
Ups and downs are sure,
And nary a rider may swap.
Playmates
These verses were never written
To impress, to stand on display
On their own two legs,
Nor extend their limbs, nor stay.
They were born as companions
To drink my imaginary tea,
Or brush my hair, or whisper secrets
In the dark, to sing to me.
They were never meant for fancy dress
For beards to appraise their structure
They were never woven
To resist such puncture,
But just to keep me company
Just to tell the truth,
When honesty became something
More than I could do.
Ill-prepared for such critique,
Such stringent demands,
But they have fulfilled their calling;
We have grown together, hand in hand.
The Greater Good
In all my days of wandering,
Wending through water and wood,
For every move I made I
Mustered what courage I could,
Closing my eyes, and holding my breath
Putting foot, by foot, to ground
And while my fear was never lost,
Some little bravery was found.
On the outskirts of each town,
I buried my farewells.
Just enough courage to leave them,
But never enough to tell
And once I left a city,
I cut it from my map,
Because there was never any forward,
If there was ever any back.
All the friends I found along the way,
I left littered on every street,
Because the brave are always advancing,
The brave do not retreat
But each friend spoke into my heart,
And all their words remained,
And all my tiny footfalls
Left the echoed words unchanged.
And every word begged me
To change my wandering ways,
And every time they welcomed me
To make a home- to Stay.
Still I continued headway,
Step, by step, by step,
Until, in shock and wonder,
I found those who could accept
All my failed goodbyes,
And the worst I can be.
Friends who superseded,
Who survived as family.
Now in all my many travels,
And ever did I roam,
Nothing took more courage
Than learning to come home.
All Washed Up
How blessed I’ve been to live this life,
Constant as the ocean swells,
And churns, and ebbs as well
Eroding the sands of time.
What happy collisions I’ve had
Inside these currents
With propellants and deterrents
Who swim alongside.
In these frothy waters,
This soup-bowl of brine,
I’ve breathed the divine
And swallowed the rest.
When these mighty waves of salt
Wash me upon the great white shore,
When I can eat the sands no more,
I will leave behind my shell,
And, oh, the stories it could tell.
Standing
Desperate for The Fount again,
Always unhinged, and swinging wide
My pride gets crushed in my own disdain
By all in life I can’t sustain.
Treading in the shallow pool of thought and activity,
Lost in the flow of humanity, weighted with a surface view
By failure, like a heavy noose, I see all cloud and wave
With no desire to cry out to be saved.
My shrouded sky is split by sudden light
Cracking through my night, my hopelessness
Unable to cope with this; these expectations
That decay into hesitations embedded.
Under the weight of dread, but hope
Is no frail concept.
It is the ground beneath us.
Rain Torn
Hope is the flower that never blooms
Relentless rain drenches the roots,
Thick stalks reach the heavens
While leaves unfurl and flute
The petals wait in a fetal cocoon.
Pluck it, or tend it, anticipate
In a breathless storm
Defending the defenseless
Awaiting the vivid and worn
To bloom, to justify the eternal wait.
Struggling
How dark the struggle, the sorrow,
The dim days of man’s persistence
Born in blood and water
To a pathless existence,
A rocky ascent through
Briars and thorns,
Fists and the forgotten
Sorrow numbed, joy mourned,
Dumb when questioned,
Deaf when told
The blessing of life is
Growing old.
Wrinkle and fade,
Ebb away, but time
Is all the gift of man.
Death, our crime,
Weighs heavy on our histories.
How dank our intentions,
Turned inward, turned downward,
Too lurid to mention
But never unknown
Until love interrupts.
How sharp the contrast
The breath of God
From now, from ages past
In deep elixir swallows
To soothe the wounds
The fears and fallows
Of fate and faithlessness.
Winter Crystallizing
Sounds of summer lingering
Though day is fading fast
Leap chirping through my window
As wild as they are vast,
Perfect days of teeming life
Unmuted and unmasked,
But silence falls too soon,
Too soon the heat is passed
And another winter’s cast.
viewingcamelot 