Left sleepless adrift
Beneath moon and star
I sit in cataract haze
Mired in candlelit murk
A snifter of port is no port
For this shipwrecked heart
My pen falls from fingers
Onto words unwritten

Three months now,
I have counted carefully,
More than enough.

No need for silence,
No need for stealth
Down these hallways.

I await.
Come to my bed.
I so desire you.

I know you as no
Dark spectre
But maiden fair
With merry laugh
And sweet breath
To whisper in my ear:

Come take my hand,
‘Tis time,
Now is your parting
From all things false,
We shall part the veils,
Such wonders shall I show you.

High aloft,
Deep in leaf,
Talons locked,
Lest he sleep,
Crow is perched,
He guards their keep.
Unseen, all seeing,
His eyes must know,
Who is friend, what is foe.
Those dawns I cross
The cold bare floor to
Barefoot step
Through kitchen door,
Rising to the skies I hear
My secret raucous name ring clear
As Crow cries out
For Clan to hear,
Friend is here,
Our friend is here.
Then such Love and joy I feel,
And peace of heart
The Night to heal.

In jagged twist and turn
That slices air and
Makes my heart yearn
Full winged they land

They hop about
Peanuts they seek
I rock in my chair
With each dip of beak

When they take to flight
They carry my soul
Out of its night
Into the Light

That house held a secret,
Perhaps many,
Perhaps the explanation
Of why plowing the pasture one day
Father unearthed a human skeleton.

It was built by homesteaders,
Had held the lives of
Three generations.

One entered through a spacious kitchen,
Immediately encountered the wood cookstove
Which also heated water for the bath to one side.
A spacious pantry lay to the other.

It made me sick and chilled
To enter further,
To pass through the front room,
Grasp the worn wood banister
And climb the stairs
To the long silent dimness between bedrooms,
Peer into their darkness.

It’s bad mojo
To lose one’s shadow
And no one ever saw their shadow
In that dark house.

I wish I could have taken Pepper in there.
Dogs know.

For forty years
Nightmares of that house
Lacerated my sleep.

Recently it was burnt to the ground,
Training for firemen.

A new thought came writing this.
All my life I suffered dreams
Of demons,
Demons possessing me.
They ceased as well.

Perhaps my peace lies in
Those ashes.

They go in great gusts
Words lost
Like autumn leaves
to the first winds of winter

So many
Impossible to count
I had to be given the word
Count which I could not remember

I had to be given the words
Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration

I will lose myself
In little pieces
Some quick, some slow
This they tell me

When I

Lose the word smile
Still will I smile?

Lose the word laugh
Still will I laugh?

Lose the word love
Still will I love?

Lose the word weep
Still will I weep?

Lose the word grieve
Still will I grieve?

Lose the word beauty
Still  will I see beauty?

Lose the word death
Still will I know my fate?

I love
My little room
Entire silvered by dawn.

Tossing into trash bin
Yesterday’s coffee pod
I toss out yesterday’s cares.
Inserting a new pod
I turn the page
Of my small life.

As the Keurig brews
That first cup
It sounds a shush:
Quiet be, still be, just be
Look at the cedars and firs
Glowing with the
Fire of God.

So I sip
Coffee and chill morning air
And rock my rocking chair
To the rhythm
Of birds at the feeder

All else can wait