Charlie was my friend, he was a chef
Then packed everything in to play saxaphone
When he played the universe stopped to listen
But ****** was claiming him, this he overthrew
In favour of wine

One day on a beaten track I found him sleeping
A woman had told me to beware the *****
She stood at the top to watch me walk past
So that I'd be safe.
I saw my friend and sat down, we smoked a smoke
Talked of old times
Fields on either side and the woman
Stood in amazement until I waved to say it was all alright

One night I was sleeping and woke in the dark
Charlie was saying "Wake up wake up"
The wind was howling outside
He took hold of my shoulders and shook me awake
I said
"******* Charlie, I'm trying to sleep"
Turned over and closed my eyes.

I found out a few days later
He'd died that night
In another place far from me
Of a final old times shot

War broke: and now the Winter of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,
Is over all the width of Europe whirled,
Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled
Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.
The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,
And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need
Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

The brook keeps babbling away,
Telling the stones to hold their tongues,
The water to slow down for a bit,
For these days are long
and the nights feel ever so empty,
Daisies have craned their necks over the sides
Hoping to befriend whatever breathes below,
And the brook babbles away,
Telling all the secrets that sailed its spine,
As they pass by the banks
And wave goodbye to those still standing

of all the days
and timing too
you're no longer
the man i knew
it takes a while
they it's true
to process life
to pass it through
the brain is such
a funny thing
forgotten song
but tries to sing
you do not cease
to inspire me
your needs will
never tire me
although different
and sad to see
you'll always be
Dad to me

Snow started falling sometime late last night.
By the time we awoke, everything was covered
  in a layer thin and pristine white,
and snow was still drifting, it was dancing on down,
  glittering in the early morning light.

"It's pretty outside," she said,
  and I looked
at this picturesque scene pulled straight from a book,
  although probably not a book many have bothered to read.
  
I saw fractal snowflakes, bursting and bold,
  spinning their self-similar sides in the cold.
Though, it behooves me to say...
Not fractal in the formal sense,
  not like Cantor's middle thirds,
   nor that box of Peano's,
    and despite being apropos,
  nothing at all like curve of Van Koch's,
  nicknamed "snowflake" by some.

I saw a vector field of at least four dimensions,
temperature could make five,
or if you prefer, seven.
  Another three -- maybe two -- if directional facings of snowflakes
   are somehow important.
But that's harder to see
  this early in the morning.

I thought about assigning each snowflake a color
and tracing the paths that each one would take,
  to watch them unfurl like ten thousand dancers' ribbons,
  outlining a dedicated jogger's wake
   before tumbling to the ground to rest
   along some stable manifold.

Better yet, I wondered if this field could be reversed,
if I could follow each flake back up to the clouds,
  to find conditions under which
   two that start so close could drift so far apart,
   or how a pair that began so differently could find themselves so close,
   sipping their coffee before it gets cold.

What was it she had said..?
"It's pretty outside."
I looked.
"I think so, too."