With a shimmering corona of the dark coiling fog,
she glides through the shadows
with haunting songs,
sad but sweet.

Before the days I learned how to
appreciate the word nerd, how it
rolled inside my tongue in cool
crisp diction, I was the young boy
who walked down the crowded
hallways decked in casual collar
shirts and denim blue jeans with
a bookbag behind my back,
my hands holding a stack
of schoolbooks close to my chest,
the silent air surrounding me a
squared wave dragging in suspended
shadows.  I could hear the echoing
consonants sifting in broken space
towards uncharted worlds, murmuring
and dissolving in distant lakes, wide
and insane escapes dazed, scarlet
scraped, shifting behind vile and
vanishing outlines.  I was falling.
I could feel the snatching and
cracking inside my veins, the
looming liquid rises confining
in chamber circles, handcuffed,
shackled, crackled, half an inner
reality poisoned and pounding
in a thin wall of clogged chains.
I was drifting.  I couldn’t begin
to disentangle the words, how
its loud ringing beginning had
no ending, how its rhythm
in slow motion muted
my existence, the name
I was called on various occasions,
wondering if it would
ever end.  Now
as the days fade into each
other, the constant walks
across the cityscape that seeps
into late night gazes at the moon,
I have come to appreciate the sweet
blossoming beauty that defines
my captivating canvas.

(a travelogue)

He stared down through
the unbroken silence
lapping the shoreline
Water skippers dart around
the rocks and windfall driftwood
settled juxtaposed in cattail reeds
and emerging broadleaf sprouts

A petrified heartwood timber
lie fallow waiting bare barked,
hushed like a pining lover’s
     timeworn love seat,
     rubbed smooth as
     the crystalline waters
     of  half-moon lake

Lingering for a while  ―  
like a hidden stalker,
a perched wildcat waiting
for the full moon’s  
swooning spell to saturate
the thickening dusk quietude;
     arousing the urgent
     call of the wild —
exhaled from the held breath
of the wilderness nocturne
    on half-moon lake

The stillness was scattered
with the soft downy hairs
of the sleeping cattails,  and
the newly shed catkins
a spring gust bestrewed
from a tall resin birch tree
nigh the Sitka willows

     He  sat  quietly ...
     time out of mind ―

tossing his eyes up into the sky;
taking the time to read the stars ―
catching  them  each  again
as they fell into his gentle hands,
to show him who he was

Seeing their sparkly tracers  
trail-out above the cattails,
     from a distance
they resembled falling stars
unable to perceive their own renaissance ―
plashing lightly upon the still-water
     on half-moon lake

A lone shadow glides stealthily
near mid-tarn,.. swimming  
enchantingly with the grace
     of a blackswan
Appearing to glance shoreward
at the glowing low stars
rise and fall, as his eyes
twinkled skyward over
     the moonlit lagoon ―
heavenward of its moonlit ballet;
the lone sleek dark shadow
     slipping through
     a faint circular ripple
stirring the smooth as glass waters ―  
disappearing like a fleeting moment
     waning deep aneath
     a subtle silent wake.

When all the clear lines blurred,
he knew it had been so long ...

     but hearken !
… an interceding
     long drawn out wail  
     echoed  a feral ache
     across the stillness,
     breaking the silence ―

as the shadow reappeared;
     his tears surrendered
to the undulating call of the wild;
he felt the spirit of the sole Loon,
     as black and white
     as the moonlit night,
stir deeply in his wanting heart ―
     lay bare the silence
in lengthy yodeled psalms
to the god of the moon

Diving down deep yet again,
keeping the light he’d been given,
vanishing into the lifespring
sanctuary of half-moon lake


harlon rivers ... May 2018
travelogue: 4 of some more

some words
Ambush off the page sharp
as a godstopper
Rip a soul's blinds open
Violate the mind
Leave thoughts in tatters
Exit on a sigh