Echoes  

In the attic’s haze,
I press a withered
leaf against pale glass—

a lullaby drifts
from a cracked music box,
uncertain and warm.

That first star
hangs low in autumn’s gold,
a distant pulse I once chased.

Snapshots: rustling acorns,
my mother’s soft hum,
childhood laughter echoing walls.



Across  

At midday,
sunlight fractures through
the café’s plate-glass wall—

a leaf pirouettes
along the pavement’s
cracked seams,
circling without end.

A passerby whistles
that same old lullaby
into the city’s iron hum.

Snapshots: neon sign flicker,
tile-mosaic floor,
a pixel-bright star
blinking in my phone.



Time  

One dawn to come,
I’ll cradle a seedling leaf
in a child’s small palm—

hum that same lullaby
until it settles like dew
in their dreams.

Above us,
a star remapped
in fresh constellations
glimmers with promise.

Snapshots: sapling rings,
bedtime lantern glow,
newborn laughter
scattering daylight.







.

A raw and redemptive,
a jagged lullaby wrapped
in grit and grace.

Confronting primal origins
of beauty, tracing how chaos,
trauma, and history's rough edges
are not just background noise,

but the very instruments
in life’s symphony.
Pain isn’t just a prelude to joy—
it’s part of the composition.

This poem, insistent:
what is beautiful isn’t
in spite of the brokenness,
but because of it.

That’s where its power hits hardest—
where rock and roll meets requiem,
and we stand, animal, mostly human,
made whole through noise and nerve.





.

“Sun Between Us”

We met in the hush between semesters,
your hoodie up against the fluorescent cold.
I was Endymion—sleepless in a dream
you hadn’t meant to share.

You, Selene with earbuds in,
moonlit glow from your cracked phone screen,
texted back too fast and never what I meant to hear.

Helios was your morning shift—
his gold-flecked smile at the café,
the one who always got your order right,
who kissed with daylight precision.

I asked if you ever missed the dark.
You said you liked it
but needed the sun to feel real again.

Still, you’d find me
between the blinds at midnight,
pulling me in with your gravity
then vanishing at dawn.

I wrote you poems you left unread.
You sent me playlists I played to sleep.
We loved in pieces—
like sky through city scaffolding.

And though I knew
I’d lose you to a brighter orbit,
I stayed still— a moonshadow boy
waiting to glow again in your reflected fire.

"Echoes Between the Hours"

The day unwinds its tethered threads,
pulling time through quiet hands.
Each moment lingers just long enough
to whisper its name before fading.

Shadows stretch along the walls,
soft reminders of where light once stood,
and the air streams—low, expectant—
its breath heavy with something unsaid.

The soil stirs, not from footsteps,
but from the weight of pause.
Roots stretch deeper, seeking
waters below the earth's silence.

A single crow arcs across the sky,
its call dissolving into distance,
its flight a question unanswered—
a curve that never quite resolves.

And in this fleeting space,
where hours turn and fold like tides,
what remains are the hands reaching outward,
what lingers is the ache— waiting, still.



.

They tell us to hold steady,
keep the ground firm,
but the ground itself shifts—
silent adjustments beneath
the weight of old decisions.

Change rolls in like the tide,
deliberate, insistent;
some brace against the swell, while
others dive into its forward pull.

Neither stillness nor
movement alone can hold us—
we are in the in-between,
where each choice sends
ripples across the surface
and every hesitation
writes itself into tomorrow.

The street moves beneath us,
shifting without command,
we say we walk freely,
but the road has already been carved.
Someone chose its shape
long before our steps left their weight.

A voice rises, measured, cautious,
another shouts before listening—
the argument swells, ripples outward,
each side gripping their claim
like dry earth clinging to rain.

What if the road is neither theirs nor ours?
What if we pull too hard,
and the thread between us frays?

This world tilts in fractions,
some lean into history,
others push toward tomorrow—
the balance flickers,
a candle resisting the wind.

*** plants


🪴
hapless indulgences
animated silences
            quiver
🪴
hankered imagination
ambiguous synapses
quibble            
🪴
each way you turn
each thought you churn
new lessons learn
🪴
potted flower plants
line your driveway
mind you don't crush them
🪴














© Frederick Kesner

Tendril wafted dunes
of barren sands waffle,
swirl across mile
upon mile in every direction-
your face appears a horizon away,
there is little comfort found
in accompanying echoes.

Drifting sticks
wail in the pitched wind,
stretched on distant recollection-
stylus of the scribe named Regret;
each flurrying breeze
turns a new page,
taking with it freshly shed tears.

Foetid droppings
of some wastrel desert vagabond
provide a vivid reminder
of how it can never be again,
to kick it away
would only contaminate
these well-worn wandering shoes.

Head facing forward
wherever the nose points
except in the back of the mind
where the oasis burbles-
each leafy frond conceals
intimate moments now buried
within the unmindful desert's gut.