A lost and thirsty wanderer
          sought oasis on a parched and dusty plain
                   where spectral mesas
                merged with pastel stratus clouds -
            quivering in the summer sun.

                    A slender blue ellipse emerged
                            along the horizon's edge,
                          taunting the traveler’s arid throat.

                    Recalling child-day afternoons.
                         splashing in the pond behind the barn,
                              his legs urged toward aquatic deliverance.

                                       But knowledge seized his boots.
                                   Wary of loving a delusion,
                               he chose instead to seek a road or farm
                           or chance upon a horse-backed rancher
                                tracking down an errant calf.

                                       Still he looked back to his phantom pond  –
                                             never to know if an oasis flowed
                                                   less than an hour’s walk away.


                               December, 2018

Early morning when I get up
I am in a fight with the dark forces
that inhabit my bones
and haunt my mind.

And I have a choice:
heaven and life or the devil and death.

The quiet synergy of life,
the ebbs and flows of its tides,
the quietness of its waves lapping against the shore,
tempestuous waters crashing against the rocks,
its buoyancy keeping all afloat to journeys afar,
as the ancient mariners we must have faith in our vessels,
that on these waters we will arrive at our destination,
gazing into far off horizons what do we see ?
shimmering sun beams on the tips of waves,
or darkest of clouds that stir up the deep,
all will change of which certainty abounds.