Ancient whispers reverberate
through the valleys beyond description.
Saddlesore and invigorated
reins and stirrup sunsets .
Praying to the fire before the lowing dawn .
Smoke rises on an early
morning snow .
Hoof tracks coerced in the
silence beneath the winds .
There is a trust inherent
between the horses  and
Their cattle .

Those ancient spirits guide us ,
So strong and unwavering
we drop to our knees in awe .
And weep .
This land cannot be taken .
This land unyielding and
relentless.
This land that cannot be
controlled.
The hours hold no mercy
for the profound soul
of another age .
The duel between land and Skies .
Freedom in tears and brambles , the thistle and the thorns .
Ridges and thunderheads
Collide, beautifully deep
beyond words .
Casting the dreams that
whisper in your eyes .

Hard work and long days
honor in the wind runners,
depth in the spurs and the saddles.
In the feathers and the ropes.
Pilippa smiles , she’s home
on the range .
It seems there is only the skies above and the earth in your toes.
The open range , the one you love .
Dreams filled with Prairie stars .
The big skies seemingly dancing with the ****** land
creeping on forever .
Maybe this land defeats us .
This Savage land whose
music forever haunts us .
Or maybe it defines us .

This vast landscape
of dust , time and heart .
Boundless energy,
romance and danger .
Never wanting to leave it
to never say goodbye.
If there is a judgment
at the end of this trail .
Know it’s to follow your Lodestar.
Take risks and begin anew.
Know this land fills your heart
and sears your soul
to those ancient whispers.

I found again, my
poems, the haunted imprints of
shattered hearts in gothic style.

Poems twist. Old words
are disappearing. Love changes the
meaning. Underground seeds explode.

The foundations begin to
crumble. Would I ever see the justice
of the will to reassemble the grass?

Not fragile, I always
move forward. Theologically, I
will prove who looks behind me.

I remember you. The
morning is still dark. The dust still
covers our peers in the storm.

Rilke, how did you
find the power of will? I do not
wish to write the holocaust again.

this pain like an unwritten poem
only the winter knows how much I loved you
how little I am able to say
the air is tall, the night so deep
I walk in the selfishness of the cold
I walk in this landscape where love is an exile,
a forest without shadows, a party without guests
a happiness without an alibi
something that gets destroyed at the first burst of light
but springs again from the unknown depth of skin

I am in the waiting room of a dying love, a nascent love
while Monalisa is sleeping without dreams
in the depth of my days the certainty of tears
only the winter knows how much I loved you

On my way to the car
I glanced at the sage’s leaves laden
on what had been ground dried
by two dreary desiccated months
of a blustery autumn
aching for the  moisture of winter.

This rainy cold night
seemed to be saying don’t go out
but there was something
that beckoned me beyond the warmth.

Wet streets magnify the lights
dancing on the pavement
as if to deny the darkness a victory
******* up the day’s grim mood
into a mass of grass and mud extruded
by the slow mushy pace of my boots.

The changing seasons
have the mysterious mission
of rustling us
out of our fatigue or ennui
hanging mosslike on our battered psyches.

Maybe the seasonal shift was that beckoning
into the rainy night
to transform me by its cavorting light
to come here and write  
on these pages rich
in dreams, imagining, and flight.

I woke up at angles with you
---a parallelogram, opposite but equal,
my thoughts in constant rotating view
---a diagram, showing us where
our homes are laid to rest,
where streets became dead spiders
caught in their own webs.

If we are in transit via tunnel,
aqueduct, or escalator,
it might be cinema.

If we lose atlas in the worship of light,
it might be cinema.

But I can't find you here;
here, where they used to build ships
from sand and steam
and science fiction;
where they used to design
buildings so as to create
a dissonant and mournful
whistling sound when wind
blew through them
---ostentatious things;
dead people’s things.

Through walls and underneath concrete, dug so deeply
into the wide plains
and withered, gnarled tree roots
of an agonizer's conurbation,
is a space halfway to the zenith,
charting the prescribed power
of in-betweenness.

Never again will we draw meaning from
our proximity to one another.

heavy rain from a darkening sky
and buildings  fall

no one knows what will be left
running down the nowhere
where dreams die
on a metal tray
at the hospital morgue

trouser leg pushed up
the search for black ink
and a child's name
begins

perhaps the arm
the hip

the back?

and the children plead,
lie to me,
tell me,
i won't die,
today

and the silent screams
are left in an eternity of why?

foul and bitter hearts
will prevail
on both sides,
this is the poetry of death