A turn of the phrase
can turn the mind
Opening it
to before unknowns
Never to return
To it's original shape
And squeezed limitations.

©  2017 Jim Davis

Lightning is the fleeting thorn of blooming thunder
The self-erasing crack into the sky window
The laceration of the clouds that left no scar
And sealed itself instantly
And bled to life bountiful
Shifting afloat in deep grey

*

The lightning showed me the way
To the burning tree
The clouds were dark with worry
That I would not see
The thunder told me to hurry
Before the earth swallows me

I fear.
Everyone does
I once conquered one,
the fear of being none

Today I fear a lot
I don't fear you, you're wrong
I'm just afraid to be with you
I fear attachments.
I fear moments spent with you
I am afraid I might be used to it
I'm afraid someday those moments
turn into memories
and those memories will haunt me
as I face my next fear
and that is the fear of losing you
for life is like picking a flower from a garden
handle it,
let its thorn hurt you
let it wilt
or let it go

or you can simply just fear it
and be none.

My coat is black
like the nights
I have long forgotten.

I left heaven
for the taverns.

I did my readings before daybreak
when the moon was far aloft,
but the nights got longer.

I kept putting things off
hoping I would discover a star
I knew was there.

Now I saw logs
and leave the leaves
where they fall.

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.  Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green **** hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.