In a cathedral of stone, stark and white,
with a lone statue from long before.
It stands in a niche, with a soft spotlight
shining on its medieval decor.

A ****** Mary, with her Mona Lisa smile,
looks down from her pedestal high.
In quiet, I stand and gaze at her for a while.
Did I just hear her audibly sigh?

Her gilded robes are weathered, cracked,
the once bright paint’s faded and spare,
many scars made plain by shadows cast
by a red circle of candles lit by prayers.

What crises has this scarred Mary seen?
Her sighs echo ours: This statue’s hallowed
by the pains the prayerful to her bring.
I hail thee, marred Mary, full of our sorrows.

I stand in front of a stone library
that once held great knowledge therein,
but stands now empty under skies dreary.
I whisper a prayer for our sins:

Please, Lord, let the children who follow us
grow wiser than we ever were.
Let them yet be the loving kindness
that we have signally failed to confer.

I doubt that they will ever forgive us
for this fallen world that we’re handing down
thanks to all the blind disservice
by leaving little but ash on the ground.

Before us all stand two stone gates
each leading to diverging roads:
The one leads to our visible fate
while the other fate overthrows.

Please, Lord, let those born in these days
choose the path of the unknown
instead of taking the road that behind us lays:
They shall our foolishness swiftly outgrow.

What few blessings I may pass on to you,
O dear reader of the future’s present,
I give you freely in hopes of a new
rebirth in a world without end, amen.

Fifty years ago, the future came,
built in concrete, tile, and bright lights,
underground station, undergirding the fame
of this city, adding to its manifold sights.

Now the future’s a place that smells of stale beer,
barely lit by futuristic lamps in disrepair,
wallpapered in graffiti, strewn with gear
of the pale homeless who’ve made this their lair.

They, like this chipped, grimy, forsaken place
are left in the dust of our dreams’ mercury pace.

Palace in night fog
draped in a pale vestal sheen —
Moonlit débutante

When I was a kid in the Virginia mountains, we had a train line that ran yonder through our quiet little town, a few miles from our house.

In the warm summer months we’d have the wooden sash windows wide open, their screens strummed by the breeze and humming a hushed lullaby.

Each night, lying in bed, I heard the remote rolling roar of the train when it blew its whistle as it neared our town.

Every night, as the dusk fell, it came: the slow rush and roar of iron engine wheels that glide along on roads of steel. The engine‘s sacred heart was stoked white hot, fed by black coal dug from those rolling hills.

Then the hush of night lifted for a rolling moment: The engineer pulled the whistle cord — releasing a long plaintive chord of a melancholy choir, pitched just so, for to sound softly through the coal-hearted hills of the Blue Ridges as they echoed in quiet reply.

It was my signal: It’s time to sleep.

The nightly ritual chuffed on. Boxcars rumbling on rugged rails. A distant engine roaring by in steam and stoked fire. Waves of lightning bugs that rose and fell in the sticky summer night while foxfire faintly glowed blue in the brambled underbrush. High above the rolling green hills, between the watchful blue mountains, the stars arced past on their tracks of old.

I’ve long lived far from home. Longer still has the now lonesome line been turning to rust. Now I know why the whistle wailed: It was wistfully aware that its last stop was near.

But I still hear the ghostly wail of the whistle past, as the slow steam train of memory glides through the dusk of my soul.

The promise of a future bright
encased in a temporal temple:
It sits among Berlin’s blinking lights,
a spaceship made to resemble.

Its oracles stood in this aluminum starchurch
dressed in sparkling ABBA track suits,
alit by glittering disco ***** with lights that search
for the future’s many loyal recruits.

But futures seldom turn out the way
that priests of the modern prophesy,
and this once sleek starship sits, decays
while stoic streams of cars drive on by.

What happened to the dreams we had
of federations who deep space explore?
Was it all just an ephemeral fad
now left in twilight, to be ignored?

Then again, this is Berlin, the place
that is built upon its broken dreams —
Utopias all cast aside, but which grace
this city with abandoned and fading gleams.

The starship sits in unending preflight,
awaiting the signal to lift off.
Its digital clock counts down to delight
but never makes it past Hasselhoff.

Climb aboard Battlestar Berlin, my friends,
fly with warp speed to nowhere at all.
Before you know it, the latest trends
will leave you yearning for total recall.

In the bleak winter
under hurrying clouds,
the wind blowing, bitter
gusts through trees’ barren boughs.

A small house: Its nooks
in new Gothic style
once housed the old books
of a forgotten king for a while.

It had been a library,
a place filled with words;
now all that here tarries
are the winds and the terns.

Its glassless peaked window
looks out on the sky
to waters that flow
by the small palace hard by.

The window is incised
in stone shaded gold —
a warm tone that belies
its touch that is cold.

The red palace is crowned
in gold and white marble.
They shine out, gowned
in hues that spite winter’s pallor.

Now blue waters and birds
add color to the scene
that fills this blank window
with nature’s stained glass serene.

This house has stood waiting,
empty in wintriest times —
now it’s filled by nature’s painting
brushed in hushed hues divine.