Your poignant silence spoke
             with the voice
    a thousand unspoken lies,
       the kind of  little sins
    that wear away the soul

    An obscure grain of salt,
       awakening dissolved,
      in a vast saline ocean
   of life’s ever fugitive tides

       Chasing rogue waves
       across deepest oceans;
          carried away to be
willingly drown in a sea of love,
          a mystic blackness
far beyond the cresting breakers'
  fomenting meringue riptides

   From the headland cliffs above,
           a lone  shore pine
           leaned windward
       out over land and sea,
    tough skinned roots cling
        bared by prevailing
          winds' migration

        Smoothly calloused
       by the blowing sands
       eroding the sapwood
         atop the petrified
          heartwood rings
            of untold time

        Abiding on the cusp
      of falling farther down
          than any ordinary
               directionless
        semblance measured
              nor bona fide

   The nebulous distance back
     an unbridgeable breadth
           long since buried,
n'er to be forgotten milestones,
   abandoned without a trace,
 like footprints blowin' in sand
     erased by the prevailing
             westerly winds

     Illusions of fallen mileposts
          counted backwards,
        undone clicks beyond
       the abacus beads reach

    Was it the untrodden space
      between distant horizon's
   unreachable scope of reason ?

                No way back
               was etched on
         the last thrown stone

       The broken inland hills
   are neither mirage nor oasis
   bit by bit washing out to sea
  
             A turning point,
        compass drawn away
   with the arrows convention.
     Without magnetic north
       an arrowhead courses
    with the silence of a trees'
           uncounted rings
         of benign measure

        Felled by gale winds
         of tempest change,
       weather-beaten feeder roots
     no longer strong enough
   to grasp all that failed to be

       Old wood is not soluble
            like salted silence
        ebbs away unnoticed
      as life’s evanescent tides

           ...“love always”
       was just chosen words
           I longed to realize …

                 timeworn
       smoldering intentions,
         a blown out candle's
    blackened wick remnants

   Another sobering salutation  
         to look the other way
      without saying goodbye ―

             A lump in throat
            swallowed silently
           abides deeply within  
              without choice;
       lost hope buried beneath
       enduring sneaker waves
                unsettledness

               The memories
          of her muted words
             drowning out all
         I could never become
    
            Sadly recognizing
           it was only a dream;
  convinced we were really doing
             something special
               Now knowing
     it's like crashing high surf
       that never left the shore ...

          Tonight in the throes
            this restless silence,
                 you can see
       it's still raining down hard

            There's no reason
           to even go outside;

            there's no shelter
             from the storm
           that washes over me

                       forever
         Chasing Rogue Waves
                           ...
             These shards of rain
   were never heaven's teardrops

       Tears are the heart's traces
     and,... I've got no time to cry


wild is the wind ... January 25th, 2017