what was  in the longest sleep I have ever had?
dreams of mistletoe or camels
the brunch with the Dalai Lama
or George Harrison's hair
in my hands,
and had I any dream?
I don't know....
just rest
for me,
a quiet peace.
a piece of God.

Dark again
Darker than
Colourless sounds
From ceiling to walls
Always
Strange doors
Like gaping mouths
Dragging tears
Cracking open
Screams of silence

A day or night
Then comes the light
At long weary last
Ended future
Useless past
Nothing holds
Narrow roads
Damaged junction
There's a time
Comes the light
Follow the light

                          By Phil Roberts

Love is a word
like a sword
that has worn
out its scabbard,
a lonely *******,
or a red rose
that opens alone,
a dream that lingers
for too many seasons
and passes in the shadows,
furrows in the dust
on a bannister,
a rock in the garden
of lust,
an empty place
at a table,
a ring on a cobweb
in the rain,
a long hair on your bed,
a nail in a blank wall.

There was a young man who sat by the Sea
Without fail, everyone knew, he would go every morning
The youth sat there to think and it made him feel free
Free to dream or not dream. When in bliss, when in mourning

He loved the Sea for its surface
Wind-kissed waves distorting starlight
He loved the Sea for it's depths
Churning into thick ink when absorbing the night

A love that began in small boyhood
Burying tiny toes within her cool sand
Though with the strong passion of man
The first time her wet silkiness tickled his hand

Oh, how he adored her! Through torrents and sun
Her whispers and shouts only separate intensities
But he would not go into her, for he feared just as much
She had told him, one by one, of her darkest propensities

So a sailor in heart, but in soul a wise lover
The boy, now a man paid respect to her glory
He and she, now and then, liked to play with each other
But she kept him from harm where she showed others fury

This went on, sunrise, sunset,  and day after day
Until all the young man's friends were stooping and gray
Still the lull of the sea seemed to pull him away
From reality and back into it, he'd gone mad, some will say

And the time had come finally to confess all his desires
To do what he had refrained from for so long
On a particular eve that seemed wilder than any
The hour to usher in his destiny, and feel her sea-song

The storm caused curling foam,
Both entrancing and detestable
But to him, it looked like home
Like a restful sleep, quite testable

He thought, could this tumult be wrath of the Father?
Or is this a sign--the return of the Son?
Perhaps, 'tis a warning from the Holiest Ghost
He was wrong, but just right. 'Twas all this, but in one

And nearby sirens sang
For the bravery of their hero as he was swept from the shore
And far-off sirens rang
For the fate of the old man, the sailor, who watched the sea no more

Jo Thomas sat on the trestle
pulling her hair back
wagging her feet
to and fro above the river's
below.

Recalling the boy she had met there
five years ago
and how he had left
her

It seemed , to her,
like a lifetime
since she had held his gaze
in hers.

It had only been a month.
But, to , youth, to
young love
a day
might be a century.

She heard the whistle,
two of them again,
he used to call her from the woods
with a shrill hello.

She felt the tremble
of the wood
she just sat there.

She wanted to belong to him.

So Jo Thomas
gambled , perhaps
they could be
in eternity.

In your bleeding cross-section I count
three centuries of wooden wisdom
since that mother cone dropped
on soil no one owned.
Black bears scratched backs
against your young bark. Ohlone
passed peacefully on their path
to the waters of La Honda Creek.

In my lifetime you groaned.
Your bark filled with beetles.
Woodpeckers drilled, feasted.
Needles, whole limbs,
you shed your clothes,
stood naked. I cut your flesh.  

You walloped the earth, creating a trench
two hundred feet long where you lie.
As you fell in your fury
you destroyed my tomatoes,
smashed the daffodils,
snapped a dogwood.

Better you crush my garden than my house
which did not exist nor any of this town
when you first advanced one tender green.
I want to believe the sawtooth less cruel
than another winter of storms.

All good fathers must fall.
Your children surround you,
waving, blocking the light.
My children count rings,
hands sticky with sap.

that rented ******
the several flow
of life