All the earth
Became the water
A question I
Could not answer.
Soft yet rigid
Slightly spinning
Love the same of
Sand.

Autumn
The sun rose like an old wave over
All the mountains that couldn’t contain
The light from which they came
A long time ago, yet the wary day was
Young and inexperienced in the season of
To shed a leaf, to feel first snow (ode to
the wiggling winds of change).
Love was both young and old and
In the hazy sky the light took on
More the color of an eternal being
Sitting down to read a book beside
A half open window, a fuming
Cup of coffee (oh to be both alive
and empty) more the color of
greeting than anything, a shy
"hello?"

All these window lights are people
Eating, breathing sleeping
Like the sunrise, like the moonset
Devouring the space given to them
Like a river, like a mountain
(Sleeping, waking, moving).

All these stars are dying
Emptying out their existence to the
Emptiness of the unknown
Devouring the space in which they seek
Like a river, like a mountain
(Sleeping, waking, moving).

Who is it that wanders in their mind’s
But the ones who ask the harder questions?
Who is it that goes down into the black swamp
And confronts the age-old cypress?
It is the one’s filled with light and dying
Like a river, like a mountain
(Sleeping, waking, moving).

The only way in is through
In the swamp, full of thick
Muck. The only way out is
Above, the punctured sky
Of stars. My bones become
It’s thoughts, my thoughts
Begin to stir. Muffled wind
Through the naked cypress
Then the moon
Then no more

Physical burning wing
In motion the big bird
Flies into the woods
Like a flame extinguished;
The year is in rust and waning
The day in dusk and purple
And it's best we head home now
Back along the cow path
Over the glacier's disposed memories
(Still looking backward
My mind goes deeper into
The cold, dark forest)
To the steady fire waiting for us.

I went out to explore the night with my mind
Very delicately unweaving the onerous stitches of fear
To become as free as the wind, or say as free
As a bird in the wind. The thought of winter hung over
The town like an approaching glacier being
Very eminent, but not precisely clear, as if to leave us
In a state of perpetual dread (is pure freedom free
Of fear?) and grinding out the light. I wanted it to be
Then that I knew she loved me, walking beneath
The trees like giant balloons in the lampshade light
Swaying overhead, sipping in the night like
A fine cocktail before a fire, strolling through the
Streets and ally ways of the city brain. And perhaps it was then
When the lady whose car broke down outside of town
Asked for a place to stay was crying, that something
In the sky burst, like an explosion, seen but not felt.
The night was young, dependent on your age
And our love was young then too, much like
The first leaves of spring, or the first frost of winter.
Perhaps it was the intensity of the moment
The screaming cars, the vehement animosity
Of an open window, that lead me deeper into the
Mountains, walking beside a stream swollen
With the reflection of the loveliest of
Star blooms, the most delicate of flowers. It was then
And it wasn’t then. Just out of grasp, the mind reaching
Forward further.

I've seen so many pass beside
My sharper edges
I've felt the eternal night
Beneath my softer bones
Flow like water
(Kissed the eternal light)
The fire from which I was born.
I've watched them come and go
As I broke apart, as the stars
Above and below exploded
Breathed hard, harder
Going forward and backwards
Like a dream, it was a dream.
I was a stone beneath a tree
A bird on the limb
A cloud, disappearing into the horizon
A wave or two across the shore
A fish, a feeling quicker than a flash
Of lightening, my flesh transparent
My veins deep as time
(And you there for a moment)
Stirring like the seed
That began everything
There along the path
Which you happened upon
On the way to the lake
Beneath the mountain
Beside the pine (it was in the
Time of summer, smoke)
I took a week, a break, to discover myself down the long road
Toward the southern heat;
It hasn't began yet though
Tomorrow it will.