In the days when we first chipped stone
and carved from earth long lines of chalk,
we set in place rock circles honed
to hear the nature spirits talk.

The hurried sun wheeled all around
these massive stones we made to stand,
casting shadows on this fertile ground
that tell us when to sow this land.

Then came the age of bronze first wrought.
We built our temples where oracles spoke
foretelling how our world was caught
in snares and schemes of gods provoked.

But tin and copper fell to iron;
A new temple grew upon Zion’s hill,
as gods to just one god would turn —
iron presaged dark satanic mills.

Another grain in the hourglass fell:
the sharpened skill of work in steel.
Our churches rose with tales to tell
which called us to in sackcloth kneel.

We wedded iron with coke and steam
to summon power, rip from earth
all we ever craved: a false dream
of boundless bounty, endless worth.

From one old god to a new model,
religious in the cult of me,
prepackaged for our blind apostles,
Mammon’s black seed sowed eagerly.

This seed turned slick with silicon
from which grew fiberoptic veins
injected with an ****** balm:
A new cult idol it became.

Today the circle’s stones are laid
in server nets that span the globe,
with oracle influencers well paid
to infantilize our frontal lobe.

Bright magic mirrors in our hands
with retina screen technology:
Tech prophets lead to this promised land
of unkept promises to fill false needs.

The circle’s silicon steles stand:
new dark satanic mills for today.
A mock Jerusalem holy land,
bare desert where chalk lines once lay.

In this waste I find an old stone axe
of flint and oak and red deer’s thread.
Its polished head still bears the cracks
from when we first on this path were led.

In late fall the tree embarks
on the path to winter’s slumber —
as the dimming days slip short and dark —
of leafy weight she’s unencumbered.

There in the grooves of her linden bark
the worker ants prepare for the frost
that spreads across her lichen’s mark.
One pulls leaves over, a blanket soft

to keep them warm, a leafy tent.
It shields them from harsh winter’s maw,
which bites with brittle frozen vent
and breathes through branches bare and raw.

In the underground, her roots hold fast
to living soil that’s black as night.
They mirror icy wisp-clouds that grasp
the frosted skies’ pale starry light.

At last she slips into a dream
of bursting buds and birdsonged air
which softly waft in dewdrop streams
in answer to her winter’s prayer.

The copper dome
of this domus Dei
provides a home
where I may in silence stay.

Beyond its great doors,
a sea of candles like a hearth.
The cool marble floor
reflects the roof mosaic’s warmth.

In this vast space
my silence softly echoes
and in my vault vibrates
a secret libretto.

A-walking through a burial ground
as autumn’s bleak winds buffet me,
I hear plainchant that makes no sound
come from a church behind bare trees.

As I wade through seas of fallen leaves
that blanket tombs of fallen folk,
the whitewashed church’s lichened eaves
are loosely draped like a priestly cope.

Behind the church’s wooden door
comes silence sounding out a song.
Its words unsaid, no rigid score,
to the whirlwind this primal hymn belongs.

Well fortified by thick stone walls
a-quarried from the craggy heart
of this carved earth’s basalt halls,
this house still plays its sacred harp.

For though someday the sun will rise
above this temple’s gaping ruin,
its oaken rafters open to the skies,
there will go on the formless tune

whose notes compose creation’s tale
that’s told unwritten in lettered fire.
In my lungs I breathe the words
to join someday the hidden choir.

With that, this door did not lead inside
that bastion built for worshipping.
Her song instead had opened wide
my spirit for all this life will bring.

In the teardropped dew of golden hour
as dusk-sun dips below the edge,
an angel of bronze upon a stone bower
keeps watch as nighttime’s fingers stretch.

Across the spans of painted sky,
one by one bright sparks appear:
constellations form as portraits high,
a hunter, two bears, points on the sphere.

These starry creatures connect the dots,
parade across the firmament
and crown the angel deep in thought,
twelve stars, a wreathed encirclement.

The hunter wheels around the dome
of charcoal sky. His thrice-jeweled belt
shines out to mark him as he still roams
in pursuit of where scorpions dwelt.

Above him run two starry bears,
one’s tail-tip pointing to the north.
Though he lays his trapper‘s snares
the scorpion always hurries forth.

The angel watches the hunt go on
as it’s been since this our rock was made.
She hums her part in creation’s song
that set it all turning on time’s old lathe.

There in the shade by moonlight cast,
this angel smiles at the pageantry
of starry figures marching past
to mark her maker’s majesty.

An old man climbs into a vintage car
to smell the sweet upholstery,
caresses the steering wheel’s steel bars
and grips the gearshift **** of ivory.

He pulls the heavy door to close
it and hear its deep, dull iron clunk
that fuel-injects him with a dose
of chrome-clad metal hunks.

The streamlined car doesn’t move.
Still, it takes him on a favored trip
down a grey road well grooved
that his whitewall mind-tires firmly grip.

Its tires spin in grooves and sing
a well-pitched tune of rolling on.
Seams of concrete slabs now bring
the bumping heartbeat of this song.

His greying hairs match the road
which stretches out into his past,
leading him back in freeway flow
to a love that he’d made last.

For in a leather rumble seat
in a sleek car just like this one,
he’d kissed her hand and lips to greet
his sweetheart hunnybun.

She smiled as bright as high beams
at her motorheaded beau,
with wide eyes that stole his dreams
and made his fuel more quickly flow.

With hair like raven asphalt
framing lips in brake-light red,
in her saw he no faults,
but thanks to him, she’d end up dead

in a shattering crash
as they slid into a tree,
his youthful driving brash
and far too wild and free.

He swore to never leave
her by that bleak perditious street.
Resolved, he chose to grieve
her and keep the rumble seat.

So once a year he sits in this car.
He never drove again.
But each time it takes him far,
right to where his hunnybun had been.

Athena turned ’round her head
like a night owl on the sly
and looked up behind her
as gold Apollo crossed the sky,

riding with his four coursers’
flying gilded manes and hooves.
Their silver flanks and quarters
thunder across the earth’s blue roof.

The rhythm of their beat
stamps a lyric all their own,
blood coursing with the heat
of the sun-disk they all towed.

The she-god of the wise
observes this cloud-streaked scene,
the man-god shining out,
casting shadows ’round Athene.

Apollo’s path is sinking low
as the winter months advance.
The frost now blurs his glow
and bare forests fall into trance.

It’s in this creeping night
that Athena finds her time.
She draws her wisdom in twilight,
no need for blinding light up high.

For she shines not with a sun.
Instead she lights her own pathway.
By her craft and wits she’ll run
her own trail she blazed today.