A simple draft of air in the lungs
like I’ve done a billion times.
Exhale to hum a song I’ve sung
that calms with comforting rhymes.

In and out and rise and fall,
to feel my stomach be moved
and breathe through fears and all
‘til wrinkles of worry be smoothed.

A-walking ‘round a stony crag
atop which stands a castle strong:
I know each rock and brick and ****
that went to build it for so long.

My forebears helped to build this place
from its earliest days, just a palisade.
Thence it grew into this mighty space
that would touch the moon by fear unweighed.

The builders began, so constant and brave.
In Godspeed and discovery they came.
Once planted, a flower of May then gave
this rock two pillars of its fame.

Today it shines out far from its hill up high,
unhidden citadel of radiant beams,
reposed beneath the starry sky
while white and red roads to it stream.

Four hundred years — or thousands more —
has it took to make this fortress fair
at great cost to those who came before.
The scent of their toil fills the mountain air.

Yet this great rock is now on the verge
of toppling into the abyss below:
For those who claim it must be purged
now storm the keep with torches aglow.

Now there’s fear this fateful fortress will fall
to the whims and rage of a dishonest beast
who claims to just want to save it all
but will only lead to its defeat.

These castle walls shall not be breached
by the demons it once bred within.
The people who still build it shall reach
new vistas to the beast’s chagrin.

In a royal garden in autumn’s decay
I met a mottled statue of a mad king.
His crumpled crown of leaf inlay
was perched upon his head tilting.

In this motley vale of fallen leaves
and maples barren of budding boughs,
he bore a scepter of willows weaved
and twisted, by mystic rain well dowsed.

The bleak stony face moved its rigid lips
to command his hedgerow kingdom’s thralls
while his blank eyes in their stare transfixed
on me, whom he his newfound jester called.

Though lacking arms, his majesty raised
a marbled finger in mocking command,
dictating his sane fool to jape, be praised
for being the maddest of mad in his land.

Poor Tom’s a-cold, my mouth let out
as he haughtily replied with a cold leer,
no patience for my well-reasoned doubt
that I should bring this fell despot cheer.

The wan harvest moon began to arise
in a suitably strange and lunatic way
while donning a cunningly dim disguise,
eclipsed by the shadows of the day.

I saw: A shroud, a pall, a veil of the mind
had set upon my innermost light.
Must overthrow this bleak tyrant’s kind
and cast down his terrible mental might.

Here satyrs were sane and nymphs unloved.
This empire of absurd has ruled long enough.
I resolve to break through the darkness above
and call the callous old monarch’s bluff.

As the dream fever finally broke
in the setting of a sudden sunrise,
from the blackness my mind awoke —
at last I’d had the courage to open my eyes.

A fork in the road.
Will it stab me like a knife
or spoon feed me joy?

Agèd lady sits,
holding her silver and gold —
Anne, Mary, the Son

Anne’s daughter’s the moon,
sits on the throne of wisdom —
crowned in golden stars

Moon begets the Son
who’s fathered by breath of flame —
Both pierced by a spear

Two women, one son —
A motherly trinity
that shines in splendor

On the day of all souls in the fall
as leaves lose luster to winter’s bane
my father’s shade returns to call
while I walk along a splintered lane:

His memory murmurs in a darkened nook
of years of yearning and wasted days,
as the distance that filled up the book
of our lives still grows as I turn to grey.

The care he’d showed I did not feel
as the pillars of our bridge began to crack.
Too late, I turned back to heal
the fallen span that we now lacked.

By then his old mind’s lantern had failed;
the new light I’d shone back went unseen
and broken arches into a chasm trailed
where once a golden bridge had briefly been.

Across the valley, dark, deep, and wide,
a spectral stretch of stones appears
to shine as a silvery coach now rides
across, to bring two sundered shadows near.

Now on this day of all souls missed
by those who find themselves left behind,
one faithful departed returns to kiss
the forehead of a son’s reopened mind.

Man builds his palaces and fortresses of stone
to last him a thousand years
while clouds drift by that last not long,
as brief as the drop of one tear.

The clouds’ only constant is their change
as they curl into filigrane wisps,
or flocks of white sheep on a blue range,
or black towers wreathed by blitz.

But one day these monuments will topple and fall,
leaving behind only a trace
for future archaeologists who’ll struggle to recall
whatever had been in this place.

The clouds, meanwhile, disperse and reform
in the wandering winds that cover this earth
to tower up high in each new storm
as they constantly repeat rebirth.