.
Coastal mist and mountains blue as ache—
Troubled waters in midair, streaming across
Such mirage of openness and tangled range,
When will the gathering skies sing me aloft?

She captures autumn
in a jar
reads the moon's straying
through leaf and branch

Always in love
with love
and always reeling
from the loss

What wave tossed this refugee
ashore?
What alignment
of stars and planets
of uncountable galaxies
brought this woman
to this world and not another?

A simple truth will tell.
The moon at high tide
hides beneath her skirts.
A slight disturbance
in the silken fabric
of space and time
and all is lost
all is born.

I hold my hands out
palms up
in prayer and thanks
every day
to mark the blessing
to place a peg
in the whole.

Given to all
denied to none
and mysterious to most

Life pours out of
a hole in the sea
leaves nothing
and everything
to chance.

This blessed world.

blues and stars
love and ink
under an opal moon
darkness unravels
unwinds leaves
that fall from
trees that wander
the rain’s ghosts
sighes and
clouds of grey.

golds sink down
the sky strange magics
miraculous the bridges
of leaves under October’s
wintry dusks calm and at rest
russet and purple the
trees yearn for the darks
of a retreating world
each leaf falling forever
each leaf a ghost
of hidden centuries
where the night’s eternal
stars wait, beautiful
in the perfections of the sky.

.
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world.  It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.

                              And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.

The eagles may pass the snowbirds,
In the air, on the land and sea;
Like the flight of the featherless Wild Geese
In a similar century.

The coops are open,
The hawk is swooping,
Talons sharp and spread;
Eyes laser fixed, and firey red.
They're locked
On preening pigeons,
Perched near the magic box.

Banished to the grey.
A conglomerate of clouds
Surround and shroud the day.
A world found still
Shrill sound of silence.
Echoes of shadows
Grace violence on our walls.
The blood of our compatriots
Our lovers, our fools.
Ours, not yours.
Potential and not a tool.
"Too little, too late"
Muttered the lips of fate,
For the ending is well overdue.

I say again
That from my perspective
When I Die
The whole World will cease to Exist
Including You.
And it will be the same for you
When you go too.

So we are Lucky now
Having the Internet
To speed our Education,
Bringing knowledge and experience to us
As our mobility declines.

It’s as though Someone has catered for our needs,
Ensuring we Learn as much as we can
Before we go.

Lucky too we are to have our radio and TV.
And some of us are lucky enough
To live in relative Safety.

Some day, if we are lucky, we might even learn
What all this Learning’s for.
Someone may even let us know.

Paul Butters