With tenacious tread I seek the dawn
Like urban trees drink deep
Of lake water and clear skies, I plant my feet
Only to stumble through
The arid wasteland of my wound.

I walk off the pain
Though each step draws the flames higher
Each breath becomes an act of will
My own heel my pyre.

I set my eye, with rigid strides
Press toward the gold horizon line.
Maybe a fool: I am my own fuel
As forward motion consumes, I'm vaporized
And my sparks skyward fly.

Ashes
To ashes, dust
To dust.

Each searing step I take alone
Then in the coals see marks
Of other feet, upward look and meet
Eyes ember bright, fearless
Fingers tracing filaments against the night.

Fire walkers give off the light
By which we find a way
A note or rhyme, a guiding flame
As forward motion consumes, refines
And our sparks skyward fly.

Ashes
To ashes, dust
To dust
To gold.

Alone the third thing can't be known.
Alone, I am a cold, dark stone
In a universe yawning lusterless,
Spinning void of aim.

Then light shines
In eyes and skies
Of gray and blue
And I am a new daymoon.

Night leads the day
As day ushers night;
Light follows darkness
As darkness the light.

I follow, you pull;
Take my arm, check my stride.
You and I mark time and tide.

We meet.
We pass.
We kiss.
Eclipse.
Heart quivers and the heavens shift.

"Let us go then, you and I,"
Wend our way across the sky.

The unknown beckons
To me and you
Where green meets hues
Of gray and blue.
Infinite line: horizons new.

Misty islands ships drift past,
Clouds cut by spires of stone, steel and glass,
Cities bright in alley pools,
Magic light on windswept moors.

Prairie hills in gentle rain,
Northwood pines sun washed again,
Spring moss upon the forest floor,
A different green on the unopened door.

"Let us go then, you and I,"
Together take the road untried;
Wend our way across the sky:
A little sphere of green and blue
'Round which we dance,

Me and you.

No poem came to me this morning
as I walked for an hour
in the snowmelt mist
threading my boots through
the brown salt muck and flotsam
winter's junk food wrappers
the city just stared
at its own face in the ice
as uninspired as me

Hangs over head by a solitary hair
Pommel set with Lucifer's star
Crossguard of the crescent moon
The Blade a king's interminable doom

Wellspring of blood and gold
In flame and glory ever
Doest thou faithful rise
Cast off thy vapor shrouds
Radiance of ancient godhood undimmed

Magnified by singing ice
As prophesied in the late darkness thy
Hoped triumph heralded while
Bearers chained on metalled rails
Muttered protest under
Hoary breath of polar air

But lo! The brazen promise of thine
Image graven in beholder's eye
Rings hollow in the bitten ears
And the stung flesh
Feels thy boasted fire
Not at all

Above thee stands the city's goddess proud
So virile once thou smilest
Upon her white clad shoulder now
Ceres scorns thine impotence turns not
But fixes her steeled gaze
On the frozen north