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.

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.

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.

In darkness, a church
of carved Baroque stone
catches me walking
unawares and alone.

Two stone hands reach out
from the church outer wall.
A gesture of blessing
or a prayer for us all

in stony carved silence
that echoes the voice
of a God we can’t hear,
who stays quiet — by choice?

Just when we need
to hear they’re right here,
they feel like a veiled cloud
that is more distant than near.

Still these outstretched hands
remind me of this:
Divine’s in the touch
of human hands’ godlike gift.

At night, a Christmas garland brightly lit —
Milky Way, spine of the sky.

An ice floe made of gathered up snow
that fell over thousands of years:
The snow’s source water had achingly grown
from billions of sweat drops and tears

But now the floe turns and starts to flow
in rivers of thawed out heart-ice
and emotions once caged start to angrily glow —
An avalanche loosed from its vice

The glacier crashes, a tectonic shift
as mountains of blue-white burst the dam:
The inland is transformed by dramatic drift —
Who will find new order in the break of the jam

In the sallow sea of sable ink
that breaks upon my splintered prow,
fire beacon’s beam a-lightly winks
and casts gold light upon my brow.

I see a man walk on the swells
and wave to me through sheets of sleet,
his silver voice a tolling bell
that beckons me to take the leap.

His shining rope crests upon the waves
that rend my vessel in tempest flares:
Across black brine the lifeline sways —
My callused hand will take its dare

to grasp the line that more life gives
and feel its pull to once more live.

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

Everything’s under control.
Sure, the controls are a bit old —
nah, it’s not quite like a dice roll,
it’s all still working, kind of, all told.

Not to worry, everything’s fine,
all systems are still online
even if it looks like some redlines
are warning us of flaws in the design.

Sure, a failure happened before
that had lots of troubles in store,
hordes of red flags that could not be ignored
but were anyway. Led to one or two wars

but it’s OK, we fixed it back then
without needing to count down from ten.
Shut down your doubts, say yes and amen —
What, me worry? That’s our kind of Zen.

Berlin, Berlin,
contradiction city.
Grey concrete hulks stacked around
old buildings rising pretty.
A never ending construction zone
that tries to top the past
while dancing ’round her history
whose pallor shadows cast.

The flicking fire in the hearth
pops and cracks a wispy smile
while its embers send their warmth
into the stone house for a long while.

The chimney curls with silky smoke
that snugly signals a cozy place.
The walls are paneled with old thick oak
to safely hold us in wood’s embrace.

This warm retreat’s stout red door
is made and unlocked by my inner eye.
Its stone foundation and sturdy floor
are crafted well for brittle times.

Pull up a chair and join me here
in this secret safest place of all —
it’s in each of us, in constance near:
Take some rest in your heart’s great hall.

Candle, candle, burning bright
in this vast and dusky church tonight.
In its shimmering light I see
few fellow faithful kneel near to me.
Our chant is soft and barely heard
above this fallen world’s absurd
descent into a tyrant’s wrath.
Like those before, await his aftermath.
Therefore we must keep this flame alive
so that hope and charity still survive
‘til the fickle follies of sundown times
end again and new dawn shines.

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

The tyrant built his tower tall,
set straight to work a-cutting through
the golden threads that join us all
to hoard them in his mental zoo.

Its bricks were baked of stolen clay
in his kleptocratic kilns’ cracked moulds.
Their stench of sulfurous yellow stays
as mockery of our cords of gold.

He covets the gleaming ties we share
to gild the cavern in his tower.
The pit that’s fed with his charm’s snares
cannot be sated with this gold of ours.

His true name is as it ever stayed,
be it Xerxes, or Julius, or Wilhelm, or Don,
this ******* hybrid of hubris and hate,
who feeds on sycophantic fawns.

But despots have their own red thread,
a truth of iron wrought long before:
Each one will end encased in lead,
entombed beneath time’s deepening ****.

The tower topples, his memory fades.
He takes his place with Hades’ shades.

The plaster peels around the windowpane
as Virginia creeper clings, hangs low
on the old stone wall that crumbles, veined
by the cracks from the hourglass’s flow.
The weathered wood of her rafters frame
this battered house that’s fading away
like the troubles and cares she’d contained
which are silting fast into the sandy soil.
The creeper‘s five leaves grasp like a hand:
Gaia hugs this house in her tightening embrace
to fully devour all the follies of man
until only the quiet creeper remains.

Many points of light
shine through blue streaks of hoarfrost —
One star leads the way

Just now I broke a teapot.
My mind was in a spell:
The shards look back forlornly,
the cracking sound was its knell.

It was a treasured heirloom
passed down from age to age,
touched by hands from times of old
but now I’ve turned its page.

It had served my family well
etched by tea and good times spent.
For now I’ll just be grateful
that this old *** came and went.

The mason chipped flecks
from slate with a nail,
each tiny grey speck
carving a brief tale
that strips a life’s fame
down to the merest detail:
two dates, one name,
in letters faint and pale.
It asks One to bless
them who’ve passed through the veil,
to grant them their rest
’til resurrection prevails.
The mason too is long gone,
none live who his name still bewail;
he lies beneath the stone
that another past mason regaled.

Asphalt night
by red dawn’s light
descends into deepest fog.

A glimmer of bright
on the edge of sight
shimmers blue: I begin to walk.

Berlin, Berlin, just what art thou?
A cake of layers baked from fates
by many bakers, cold and proud,
who filled it with chunks of bitter dates.

The cream on top is cloying, sweet,
to compensate for the stale flour
and brownish yeast of marching feet
with bruised crabapples, soft and sour.

To try a slice of this complex taste
isn’t easy: It’s baked in haste.

A Christmas market —
smell of pastry, baubles shine,
bright star lights the night.

In creeping fog
of wintry night:
My eyes are clogged.
Billows of blight.

Dull cataracts
veil antique lamps,
gun cotton tracks,
pale wreaths of damp.

Yet though here loom
dun brooding hulks
of cold stone gloom
in misty sulk

the lamps shine forth
and shall not fail
’til dark fades north
and pulls the veil.

Old and new, side by side,
always riding changing tides.
Ebb and flow, rise and fall,
topsy turvy times for all.
Old church clock strikes at noon,
a smartwatch plays a tune,
then and now we measure time —
see how our times seem to rhyme

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.

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 jet black shellac record spins
seventy-eight times a minute.
Its label bears a lady ’round the pin:
She strums her lyre pictured on it.

It’s a flat earth of forgotten tunes
that spins on an axis of steel
through heavens lit by a lyrical moon
filled with the stars of bygone years.

The label’s lady of the lyre
smiles up from her grooved time machine,
her strums reverse the stars’ funeral pyres:
On each rotation her lyre gleams.

Beyond the grave, voices I hear
defy the dark passage of time:
They sing, resurrected from yesteryear.
Her lyre scores each lyrical line.

Each scratchy hiss and tiny pop
I hear from the disc’s dust and scars
reminds me of a radio telescope
that points up to distant quasars.

Alas, the needle drifts further on
‘til it reaches the groove’s final string
and then the tonearm waits for a new dawn
when this time machine once more sings.

My heart’s ventricles
form a vast vaulted ceiling —
Crumbling cathedral

While walking through a wintry town
of weavers’ crackerbox houses of stone,
all with carved shutters and panes of wood,
I noticed I was far from alone.

A tabby cat sat on a sill
and looked at me with wet jade eyes.
I asked her what she for Christmas wills,
what sandy claws might bring as a prize.

She winked a blink as slow as tar
and gave me a sideways smile.
All she wanted was a door ajar
to sneak into with all her wiles.

Why yes, I opened the door for her,
and scarcely had she gone inside
that she returned with a satisfied purr
and said that she’d changed her mind.

This cat will do as she may please —
She’s a feline, fickle as a winter breeze.

The embers fade
from passing year
and turn to ash,
then disappear.

A span of time
that fades to black
now melts into
earth’s deepest cracks.

From murky fog
and blackest night
emerge first shoots
of new year bright.

Now from grey ash
of burnt-out past
the shoots are fed
’til new dawn’s flash.

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.

When the changes come
will winter winds still blow?
What world will we see
as quicksilver higher flows?
When this time is past
will songbirds still be heard?
Will parents still tell children
of the bees and the birds?
Will grandchildren know about
lightning bugs in the dark?
Will lovers still know what’s meant
by butterflies in their hearts?
May those gifts that we leave
for those who come hereafter
not become the close
of this book’s final chapter.

A frail man stood high on a granite precipice
as rain lashed harshly his wrinkled brow.
His dead eyes stared fixed into the abyss
while the deep clouds held an intemperate row.

The powdery embers of his belly’s red fire
had dimmed to flecks of faintest off white.
But now, not far from where this had transpired
shone out a tall lighthouse streaming bright.

And in its arc light’s blazing blue beams
the haggard man saw past his mind’s edge
to see he wasn’t the only in a feverish dream:
Multitudes stood each on a dark stony ledge.

Just then the others saw too through the gloom
that they were surrounded in this bracken dell
by bleak fellow travelers of similar doom:
They shared in their bones that they all were unwell.

This newfound chorus sang their litanies all
in crescendos of crisis and depths they bewailed
but the more that joined in, the music recalled
how by sharing their song they’d over darkness prevail.

There in the bellies of each in the throng
once cold embers began to kindle a spell:
This company of the crushed composed a new song
whose magic this sympathy symphony cast well.

The blacksmith works the iron ore
with tongs and hammer on anvil’s brow:
Within his forge’s fiery core
grows metal soft, with carbon endowed.

The coal turns grey, much like his beard
drawn out by age to wiry lace —
a silver mine that roughly rears
from his craggy quarry of a face.

In his chest, the same fire roars,
a molten furnace fueled by air
****** in by bellows, lungs engorged,
then exhaled in the bright sparks’ glare.

The chimney of his mind is filled
with sparks that dance, a glowing throng,
arising through his thoughts that thrill
to the rhythmic beat of his anvil’s song.

Reflected in his clouded eyes,
mixed in with soot and sweat and toil,
the steel sings out in joyous cries,
its notes ascending to a boil.

For though the years have dimmed his sight,
he sees through the smoke and flame. He knows
how he will find fulfilled delight —
when he with music his craft bestows.

I’m walking by the dimming remains
of a building of future past:
its once stylish streetlight, now decayed,
points at the Moon that’s rising fast.

The old streetlight was made of globes of glass
that circle its core of steel bars.
It looks like a starship, sleek and fast,
but now its globes are dusty and scarred.

The globes, a circle of eight bright moons,
orbit the streetlight’s tall spire
that points up to the glowing sky jewel,
to the place to which it aspires.

Up there, on brightly lit lunar plains,
our spacefarers once walked in awe
and dreamt of Zarathustra’s booming strains
in two thousand and one proud hurrahs.

And so this spacecraft of glass globes
was made to look up to the stars,
to urge us on to launch further probes
and take wing from this blue globe of ours.

Years later, this dream has faded
to fleeting stars of reality shows,
who leave the people fixated —
not by the Moon’s, but by screens’ dim glow.

The streetlight was fixed firmly to earth,
iron bolted to grey crumbling concrete.
But it still points up to the heavenly berth:
Moon rises, a dream left on repeat.

The king of what was stands in silence
and surveys his sunsetted realm.
His spine is straight in stiff defiance
of the twilight of the kingdom he’d helmed.

On a plastered pedestal high he stands
surrounded by the waste of his times.
Carved into it, once acclaimed in his lands,
was his name, now covered by vines.

The pale sheen of low sun as winter nears
casts shadows across his etched face.
Its grooves grow deeper year after year —
he’s the gnomon whose shade this sundial has traced.

He takes no note of the thorny brambles
that have entangled his fixed stony feet.
With flinty gaze and wrapped in a mantle
of granite, he keeps watch through storms and sleet.

Now stripped of his titles and even his name,
the proud king of the ruin’s still there.
For while the long night has broken his fame,
still he stands, marked by his unbroken stare.

A cobblestone road
in a dark night dyed with woad.
Faint glitter under pale street lights.

Icy blue fog in the late night
turned electric by the passing lights
of rumbling cars that rush on by.

They leave their streaks of LED beams
that quickly fade as if a lost dream.
The night watches with a hint of a sigh.

A space-age fortress of glitzy build
stands empty. It had once been filled
with shining futures of tinsel, milled
of bronze for a time that all would thrill.

How empty the future past now seems
behind the glass of wasted dreams:
Once polished steel now dimly gleams
and old high tech lies there unredeemed.

Its giant clock now standing still,
the hands unmoving, like hopes that will
remain as frozen in amber that’s filled
with flies of dreams: placebo pills.

Cold walls rise up and ring around
and close in to keep at bay.
Blow off the roof with a thunderclap sound,
then soar off and fly away.

Through twisted bars of dark wrought iron
I see the shining golden home.
There once I’d been in my personal Zion
from which I’d freely roam.

But now I note I’ve lost the key
to this imposing gate:
I stand outside, trying hard to see
what caused this change of fate.

When and why did I turn my back
on this inner keep of peace?
How to drop the sackcloth black
and find a new release?

Now I must pull me up
and scale these castle walls
that I myself had built
before I took this fall.

For my sake and for those I love
it’s time to find my way
back to where sounds of cooing doves
becalmed me, come what may.

The last rose petals fall to the ground
leaving the rosehips bare
as autumn’s chill again comes around
to strip blooms that had been fair
The rosehips have hairs all wiry and grey
that also break off, one by one
Her color is gone, she fades away
until this rose lady’s season is done
Her petals arrayed on frosty soil
decay gently in the cold rain
while in her hips, seeds are born
to bring forth new roses again

What lies beyond this dour door
that leads to things ahead?
I stand and wonder what’s in store
behind this portal grimy with dread.

Its glass is cracked, its lead paint is chipped
while its brick wall is turning to sand.
Its handle doesn’t invite to be gripped,
nor does it tell me where I’ll land.

I look all up and down the street
and see only more doors that look the same.
Before each one are more: their feet
wish to walk away from these doorframes.

Each one of us is seized by impotent rage
at facing a choice that’s no choice,
to be fixed as if in a steel cage
and finding no cause to rejoice.

But one of us in this bleak boulevard
must be the first to twist the ****
with the will to face the path that’s hard,
to not let our lives by fear be robbed.

Let each of us kick in our doors of fate
and overthrow their grips on our lives,
smash the clock and pass through that gate
with heads held high, fearless of where we arrive.

Spurred by the clarion call: it came to pass
our pent up waters burst the dams.
No captives are we! We struck en masse:
Battering rams forged out of lambs.

Tangy, pungent, sweet
tastes and smells fill frosty air —
The solstice scented

On a church, Mother Mary gazes up high
with her saving babe on her stone arm.
On her alabaster face: a cryptic smile
that has its own fine chiseled charm.

While I stand in the old town’s cobblestone street,
my mind sees me in a far distant place.
The visions I see speak of defeat,
a void that devours all grace.

I see myself floating in a brittle wood boat
with sails torn to shreds by the storms.
Frantically I toil to stay afloat,
tossed by black waves which ebb and reform.

Her disk halo of gold shines out in the dark,
glinting to those who sail by.
I ask her: tell me what can give me a spark
to let me soar up into the sky.

She offers no answer in so many words
and just smiles on, stonily serene.
In her silence is where her answer is heard,
a quiet reply — I know just what she means.

The rock of her tells me what I must hear:
No need to soar nor fly nor flee.
Let black tides flow past me ‘til they clear.
Like this old pale statue, just simply be.

I’ll take a stroll
through wintry night air
to free my mind
from its dark wisps and snares.

While walking in the night’s leaden fog
that weighs upon both eyes and mind,
a building emerges from dampening slog
adorned with columns of marble refined.

The fog oppresses all the known world,
with eyes and ears slammed shut by fear.
Its thralls have spread, its pall unfurled
to wring out all sense of what was clear.

And yet: Here rises
from black fog’s embrace
the lights of a campus
that spite fog’s dimming wastes.

Upon building’s brow, above the main gate,
two words inscribed. Letters gleam through gloom
and icy tendrils of iron mist’s weight:
“Auditorium Maximum” —

— the place of the greatest hearing.
If only this hall could vastly hold
the sum of all in fog a-fearing,
to teach each to hear and be thus consoled.

To live in more than piecemeal peace
in a heartily hearth-warmed hall
where all must learn the art of hearing,
to share in the greatest art of all.

The bleak sable night:
Leaden blanket drapes the world —
Supernova hope

Hey, little frog
on your pad in a pond
surveying your kingdom green
You don’t have a golden ball,
no princess came to call
and these lily pads are all you’ve seen
You’re just fine in your domain
and have no reason to complain
with your fine banquet of flies that teem
So you sit strong and alone
on your very own green throne —
just now swims up a queen

A trembling pale girl enters a stone
fortress of faith, buttresses flying outside,
in hopes of finding a way to atone,
find an anchor in the world’s shifting tides.

This Gothic cathedral lifts her wet eyes
to its heavenward ribbed vaulted peaks.
They’re painted deep blue like starry skies
in remembrance of what Creator to old Abraham speaks.

There, where each vault’s stone arches crisscross,
shines out like a clear harvest moon
the radiant burst of a gilded boss
that gleams in the recessing gloom.

Adrift in this vast and sacred space,
thin curls of burnt incense waft by
to fill the young girl with scented grace
whilst she sits in this place with wide eyes.

The gold on the stone catches candlelight
and reflects its flickering blaze
as the quiet chanting of canticles might
let her senses be softly amazed.

While the twinkling of these numerous stars
fills her rediscovered heavens within,
the tides of her fears recede past sandbars,
leaving puddles of patience therein.

The promise made by the Father long ago —
Abraham’s children would a galaxy be —
finds fulfillment in this starry girl now aglow
since from her darkness she’s tenderly freed.

She found her anchor and cast it up to the skies.
It caught a bright star and held fast.
New dawn lit inside her in quiet reply,
telling her no tides of tempest can last.

The bright death of a star
lights the black night from afar.

Astrologers walk from east to west
and follow the nova’s fiery arc.
The burst of white in heavens’ dark chest
gives sign of a birth, love’s new spark.

They walk on through sandy shards of this earth,
past broken glass of our days
to find the one whose heralded birth
gives hope that our world is reglazed.

Held in their hands are gifts replete
that tell what the child will become:
Gold for a king, sweet incense for a priest,
for a healer, myrrh that will scent his tomb.

And the lodestar that died
signals the birth of a child
whose death and rebirth
lit a new star on this earth.

Selah.

Each year I watch them travel in a snow globe
that hangs upon my Yuletide fir tree,
a glowing glass sphere where waters flow
’round these Magi walking magically free.

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.

While passing by a great Gothic church,
I see sullen skies begin to glower:
a looming wicked curse
above the church corona’s tower.

With bruised blue clouds brewing black
in the bellowing wide heavens,
hearts pounding, all shrink slowly back:
Blazing bolts scream and threaten.

Here comes the gale force shrieking wraith!
Take shelter from the storm
in the stout fortresses of your faiths
built with those who keep you warm.

For though some tempests last
over rocky spans of fears,
all the maelstrom’s wrath must pass,
even if it lasts for years.

In these sturdy stones you’ve laid,
rebuild for the coming of new days.