I’m in a wide deep river
that flows onwards to the sea.
The wind gusts at my back
in spite of the lee.

The bleak banks are far away,
the murky waters are swift,
my feet don’t reach the river’s bed,
I’m floating lonely and adrift.

Once every so often
I bump against a big rock
that my hands will firmly clasp
to stop the tick and the tock —

but the rock is slick
with the slime of passing time
and I slip on and on
to the sunset light sublime.

Look: All around are scattered people
failing too to stem the flow
as the tireless river hurries on
towards the sunset’s vesper glow.

Then I start to grasp
that to fight it is to fail
and I must be one with the river,
not see it as my jail.

And now, and now, and now:
As my thoughts flow consoled,
I float as one with clockwork water…
each bobbing second turns into gold.

In a nook of an old stone church
a cherub basks in the vesper light —
A childlike innocence for which I’ve searched
that seems to slip into the onset of night
Fade not away, you sweet dear boy
and never lose your childlike joy
Fight, fight
the snares of twilight

The sentinel stood
on the stone parapet
under heavy storm clouds
that stained the stone wet
and as the sleet fell
he turned his collar high
and, stoic, did his rounds
with the faintest little sigh —
His simple task was this:
keep watch over the town
no matter wind or weather —
the corporal earned quiet renown

Lightning snaps and rain applauds
as thunder claps above horizons’ walls
Grumbling clouds march swiftly on
to booming sounds and cracks of dawn —
Here below, in the cockpit of storm,
the rain now sows blue jewels that form
on an old rose’s petals and thorny stalks
to test the mettle of the bugs that walk
up and down their rosebush world
that’s becrowned by blossoms, red unfurled:
One bug, aloof, sits calm and at peace
under his roof of a sturdy green leaf —
This one bug that I see amidst all the gloom
is who I wish to be, under red blooms

A-walking through stone Old Town streets
of Edinburgh lashed by wind and sleet,
I saw Tron Kirk tower ***** the sky —
she loosed great raindrops on passersby:
A handsome former city church,
by fickle faithful left in the lurch,
still called down tears of Scottish rain
and wept, but dreams she’ll rise again

An old telephone
hangs unused on the wall
What voices it heard
as people made their calls
fade into the ether
scattered electrons all

Dashes to dashes
dots to dots
All those things once said
now forever lost

On the face of a tombstone there
I saw an epitaph made for evermore,
its letters eroded and worse for wear
and covered by moss that grew long before;
the trees’ roots twisted around its base
to nudge the old stone out of plumb line
and wrap the tomb’s body in wooden embrace
while draping it all in verdant vines:
The permanent stone turns slowly to sand —
a world without end that brief time spanned