at the end of winding roads, you still follow.
I believe in everything you are
to me, you are the reason and the means
to anything and everything I need.

People who really know me ask, “Do you still write?”
“Oh yeah,” I say, “I’ve never been more inventive or less relevant.”

If my days were fanned out in front of me,
like a magician's playing cards,
I couldn’t pick one, just one, any one
that was better for your absence.

In a breeze of timid whispers
and with wary downcast eyes
the secret world was opened
to where true depth of feeling lies.

With each step, stories were told
and a tapestry of intimacy unfolded.
to dare or not to dare
to care or not to care.
In the dog-days of romance,
those are the calls
that lovebirds must answer.

I'm standing close by a river of rhyme,
where words cascade, in endless pantomime,
each line is a ripple, on the rugose water's crest,
but the chaotic current seems a randomized mess.

I see waves of words riding swells of sonnet,
into concrete verse, only to crash upon it.
There are dark plaintive whirlpools of elegy
and swirling haikus kissing off sharp envoi.

This river of rhyme could wash me away,
with its desperate currents of poetic dismay.
Its sensual verses can become a toxic wine,
oh, God, don’t let me drown in the river of rhyme.

Let me  be the serene pause between the two spoken words.
May my stillness serve  as a bridge, strong and secure, mending the frailties that words often suffer.

the emerald pines breathe
through the cold, forbidden prayer
of Winter's old mass.

the ancient, forest steeple

A transient feeling.

Devotion is a sacred journey where one feels closer to destiny, on a path that grows longer as one treads it.

A yearn to set us free.