A Walk in the Quiet Night

Tonight, footfall is gone,
All focusing minds
Walled up in rooms,
Boxed within non
Engagement lines.
Government brooms

Sweep up citizens
Like confetti put
Away in its box.
Neat under a lens;
Viewed as soot
Or an earth staining pox

From the silent high.
The trees now sleep,
Yet an earth wide call
To arms is surely nigh.
The ape age may seep
Away, the potential stall

And the Great Planter
May choose again;
Something less destructive.
So it may please Her
To watch the pain rain
A little while on the obstructive.

Lost on 11th Avenue

The light fails,
The cyclic long decline of dusk
Belongs to us again.
The ever neutral sun has gone
And calm calamity cradles the earth.

The darkness
In indifference ghosts in.
The cold and never-found are here,
Still clinging to unheeded hopes
That diminish and dissolve in these quiet nights.

How many
Hurt unheard in the hidden spaces?
The dishonored die daily,
Failing the deadly demands of life;
Those who cannot conform.

Stripped of safety,
Tears freeze on frightened faces,
Hunched alone in friendless places-
Yet feeling and being as you or me
Who have all yet nothing when we turn away.

Autumn atonement

Autumn fire crackles and crisps under foot.
White willow leaves in unanchored mayhem
Eddy against the savage rampage of the wind;
Maelstroms of the abandoned in some last act Danse Macabre.

Unbridled minds are afoot,
Flaying spring’s children from wailing trees,
Wind shepherding huddled heaps
To the dark ditch tombs of the lost.

A dying year in arrhythmic gasps
Disfellowships the splendor of summer.
To atonement I turn, a supplication wind whispered.
Left with the dead, a hope for personal renewal.

Coming To Terms

In a dark place immune to summer sunshine
Sorrow’s harsh rule forces tears in silence.
Unrequited love paints interior landscapes grey,
Usurping hopes spawned on our perfect day.
Betrayed emotions crush the heart,
Impale with mistrust good thoughts when apart.

Dawn comes when tears are spent.
A low ebb reveals private pains then turns-
Turns as recovery surfs the incoming tide;
Renewal’s gush dissolving chains.

Why Do You Search with Your eyes?

Why do you search with your eyes
When our loved one lies motionless, cold?
What do you seek in my eyes
As the long wakeful night unfolds?

Do you suspect that I loved him less
Than a man who derided his tears?
Do you suppose his last gasped word was ‘dad’
When to death he  surrendered his fears?

You wont see me cry, sob or wail
When all I have left, all I sense-
Is the crushing silence of  perpetual loss
And the heartache of no recompense.

So, husband dear, you held her
When the end of tomorrows came this morn.
And you can ask yourself why you weren’t there,
As fading imagery was born.

Sweet surrender

I hold your head.
I open my doors,
For soul’s eyes to look within;
A creative embrace,
An empty space
To paint in colors of love.

I frame your face.
A chance to delve
Inside where outside cannot go.
A time to know
A moment’s glow,
Where sense has no dominion.

I caress your hair,
Feather a dream
To skylark soar above routine.
The stains of life
Caress the knife
That cuts the bonds of doubt.

I ask you now
To give your all
And spill the careful cup of years.
Release to me
The secret key
To open the door on your heart.

A Walk in the Quiet Night

Tonight, footfall is gone,
All focusing minds
Walled up in rooms,
Boxed within non
Engagement lines.
Government brooms

Sweep up citizens
Like confetti put
Away in its box.
Neat under a lens;
Viewed as soot
Or an earth staining pox

From the silent high.
The trees now sleep,
Yet an earth wide call
To arms is surely nigh.
The ape age may seep
Away, the potential stall

And the Great Planter
May choose again;
Something less destructive.
So it may please Her
To watch the pain rain
A little while on the obstructive.