The last few dying leaves of autumn
Desperately clutching their sterile lifeline
Like a hopeful body preserved cryogenically

Refusing to give in to the inevitable
Season of death.

Congealed memories of

                          Long summers:

                           Warm breezes

                               Lifeblood

Flowing freely in every vein
Assuming the promise of forever

And the more distant memories of spring:

                           New growth    
  
                          Bated breath

                      Each day savored    

(A whole year in the distorted
       Knowledge of the mature)

The youthful knowing that life is forever
Only to be lost one day
    In the distorted knowing of the mature.

The heavy frost of late Autumn  
Soon breaks the will
And the leaf is at the mercy of the winds–

                        Uncertainty

                           Isolation

                   Blowing aimlessly

Until the eventual fall to earth
Where it turns back into what it always was.

Yet one fine spring day

                         Somehow      

                         Someway

                         Recalling

The youthful knowing that
Life is forever.

At the beginning
Was an open sea
Knowing nothing
But its own
Owning every
Beach it met
Not knowing enough to feel alone

After many
Long years it finds
There is much
More for to see
Inlets and outlets
On every shore
A sense of greater freedom to be free

The sea joined
To many rivers
Seeing land
On either side
Freedom then became
Just a memory
The river's end was not in sight

But along the way
An Ocean Watershed
Joining rivers to the sea
It had to sleep
In many river beds
To see what it was meant to be

Down in the river
Flowing headlong
To the sea
Joining the
River's rage
That is where
I long to go
That is where I am meant to be.

I am weakened without
The Eternal Imagination.
                         It lifts me above the bitter
                         Waters I have drunk from
Like a thirsty deer ignoring
                         The faint acridity and
Lapping the coolness until its mid-section
Cramps and it sleeps it
                         Off in the tall cool grasses
                         Only to arise again
                         To drink of the same source.

Foamy blankets outstretch over
Endless bitter pools before
                 This wanderer who searches
The midnights keep for my souls Delight
Passing other shrouded figures  
Who wander through
This universal dream
Like ghost ships
Gliding the haunted deep
Never sailing beyond this
Dark world of mores and memes
And endless waves of prosaic time
Slumbering in our brokenness
Lost in dreams of our barrenness.

How long will Heaven wait
To awaken me from this troubled sleep
Or will this restless dreamer pass
                    Through the final dark
And misty veil only to
                        Continue to wander
But then in eternal sleepwalk
In an infinitely darker universal dream
With the now otherworldly ghosts?

I still have so many more
Miles to go
But I am now wide-awake in deep sleep.
I have escaped the hungry deep
                              As a bird from a snare
Soaring miles above in newness of life

For the levy of holy waters
Has been breached.
Now this cleansing eternal deep
                              Keeps drawing me on
To Reaches unknown.

He travelled to Canada's west coast
To sit in fields of Mushrooms Magic.
Psychoactive effects created rooms
Filled with white cognitive static.

He returned to his hometown small
In Boreal forests of Ontario's Northland.
Beyond locked doors now unhinged
He sank deeper in grey matter quicksand.

No one quite knew Joshua anymore.
Disturbance eclipsed his passive way.
At the local pub he told Ed and me
He was being followed by the C.I.A.

In one weeks time he picked up a knife
And stabbed his father and mother.
His father lay dead on the kitchen floor
She played dead and tried not to shudder.

Joshua was found just sitting in their car
When police came to the scene of the crime.
In a hospital for over thirty years now
His room has been a static void sealed mind.