So long have we laid here, dormant,
Rested until our souls were restless
To leave and wander the distant stars.

No One will hold us All once more.
(The Tyrant has taught his lesson well.)

This emptiness called space,
Has always called to us to fill.
We are always looking up-
Those on the ground and planet bound,
Those living at the top,
Always looking up and up
Into the distance that can not be pierced
By a single pair of starry eyes.

The beat of humanity marches forward
On a million different drums.

Live, Humanity! And sow your seeds
Into each empty crevasse and sink.
Breed life into the infinite confines
During your finite time in flickering existence.
Let life grow and flourish,
Like clashing waves that topple and break,
Mountains eroding into valleys,
Seas evaporating into dust,
Battlefields to hearth and back again.

(Once the planet was Arrakis then Rakis
then no more)

What will be made in the great Unknown?
When we go looking, who will stare back from the Void?

Once, the wild forest
Treaded beneath,
Its vestigial remains laid under my feet,
In pockets of youth that grew out of the ashes.

Once, the wild forest –
I dreamt of it, sleepwalking, moontalking,
I dreamt of walking down that forest floor,
down mountain slopes and crowded ravines,
and curving around the canopy as the birds do.

Oh, the wild forest,
How you sleep and slumber,
How you call to me with all your moss and your green.
Your spiders spinning webs, the old sequoia tree
Who has seen more than I will in a thousand lives.

Once, the wild forest,
Treaded beneath my feet.
How that ancient spirit slumbers,
How the forest sleeps.

Petals in the wind.
How like you
To leave me feeling scattered.

How like you
To take away my beauty
Without force, no shaking of the tree trunk,
Just the slow untangling, loosening,
Until I am adrift.

Do you hear it?
That gentle sorrow,
When all are marveling at the cherry tree,
The orchard in springtime,
The pretty picture it paints
In the skyline, the treeline, underneath hopeful feet
Of youth in the sweetness of first kisses, first loves –
The gossamer thread affixed in the fall.

In time, I will be made anew,
The petals you once brushed from my hair
Will not be mine anymore.
But still, each year,
I will relentlessly bloom
Until the axe has fallen, striking the heartwood.

Music played
Out loud
Fills the air around me.

I drop the headphones
Somewhere between 5th street
And an A minor chord
From the string base and
The violins.

Winter is coming.
The frost tipped grass-
Crystals in the sun,
Are fading by the light.

Winds blow the tune back to me.
Out my mouth pours a song.

It is a twinkling thing
An anthesis against the background
But the beat is the same-
In time with my steps.

Music played
In silence
Fills my soul within.

On the branches of the great Ash tree,
He hangs upside down
Over the pond of reflection.

“I sacrifice my eye to me,
Allow me to see those that I can change
And those that I cannot;
The deepest corners of the heart
And the universe it flows in-
Grant me Wisdom beyond Sight.”

And he hangs for 9 days and 9 nights-
Not dead for death has not been born.
(There is no death without time and no time when the world is stagnant)

Waters swirl up and engulf him / he slowly dips his head in.

The sacrifice has been received.
A God is born (not created, not made)

The branches of Yggdrasil sing.
Movement, vibrations,
The stars and the moon start to spin,
Welcoming inspiration.

The silence
hovers
above the pines
and empty branches.

The sky
is enveloped
in a sweeping grey.
It mirrors the fields;
mulled brown tips above the white snow.

Trees
are paused mid wind,
branches gnarled and twisted,
a line of white crawls up the trunk,
their bones showing in the cold.

A breath
travels across the field
and out
like ripples.

The silence,
         lingers