Poor Viktor Hartmann!
All that remained of his towering soul
were visions pressed on to paper
hanging in a St. Petersburg gallery.

Mussorgsky advanced his lumbering frame
along the gallery halls
searching for his lost friend.

Sonic images formed in the composer’s mind
singing replicas of Hartmann’s icons:

        An old castle,
        Children quarreling,
        An ox resisting the yoke,
        The Great Gate of Kiev.

Mussorgsky’s notes sound and vanish
as ephemeral as life itself -
passing into the ether only to live anew
with each successive performance.

      Viktor lives!

October,  2006

The Brick Church Road leads to Friedens
where yesterday as today
wooden carts and steel wagons,
ferry their most solemn cargo.

After the preacher’s comfort tonings
of walks through the shadowy valley
and eyes lifted to the hills,
After fresh sod flourishes
over the sealed earth,
the carved stones whisper,

“Remember our bearings and sirings,
the banners we carried,
our triumphs and stumblings.
Sound the words and tunes of our jubilant songs!
Never forget that we are you.”

*April,  2007

It wasn’t really John’s saw
that carved the branch into logs -
its blade severing rings of time.
The saw was mine but just like his.

Resting for a spell, I thought of John:
clearing his spread by the Williamson Road,
building fences, raising his barn,
or, like me, cutting wood for the hearth.

But perhaps I didn’t “think” of John at all
since he lives in each cell that I am.
He may have just stirred a little within
to recall pioneer paths we once had walked.

The long branch shortened
as John and I pistoned our arms
in unison across centuries
slicing through time and space -
stacking fuel to warm a cold winter’s night.

May, 2006

Majestic eagles ride on thermals high
    above the river’s wooded shore:
white hooded monarchs of the sky.

Keen eyes survey the waters as they fly
    in quest of prey to taste or store.
Majestic eagles ride on thermals high.

Above the bluffs, their shadows multiply
    as each December dawn brings more
white hooded monarchs to the sky.

At winter’s end they’ll homeward fly
    to fish the river's northern corridor.
Majestic eagles ride on thermals high.

The eagle’s noble span and piercing cry
    are immortalized in native lore.
White hooded monarchs rule the sky!

Since on spirit wings I must rely
    I dream aloft where eagles soar
and glide with them on thermals high:
    white hooded monarchs of the sky.

*December, 2006

If I could be a fly on Einstein’s wall
I’d buzz about from chair to curtain
watch him check out plans and gadgets                                            
and scratch remarks on his papers.
When the clock edged to noon
his stomach would growl,
he’d fold up the prints and say,
“It’s a relatively short walk to the café.”

With Albert out I’d take the run of the place -
practicing banks and dips and vertical lifts.
I’d munch on scraps of Brie and fowl
left fused to the edge of his table.

When the tumblers turned
I’d buzz back to my wall, eager to witness
whatever this sage would chance to say.
He’d go to his desk to file reports
and stack them neatly into a tray.

Without warning he’d rise from his chair
scattering papers across the floor.

“MASS AND ENERGY ARE ONE, ” he’d shout, -
“CRUSHED TOGETHER BY TIME! ”

I’d buzz and swoop and fly circles and loops
and taxi in on his collar.
I’d beat my wings to cool his brain.
But wait…Whose voice do I hear?
Oh, it’s you gentle reader.

“Stop, hold it right there, ****** pest!
It couldn’t have happened that way!
Have you no shame or respect for God’s truth? ”

But I’d stare you down with my compound eye
and scornfully twitch my wings.
Consider this, troubled sir,
you’re the one scolding a talking fly.

*July, 2006

Spare no lament for the maple leaves
     that hail their impending fall
with blazing gold and scarlet concerts
     bright as Christmas brass in marble halls.

How bold their radiant hymns resound -
     mute to the sweatered ones below
whose treble scraping rakes -
     raise smoldering pyres of the fallen.

Steamy plumes from cocoa mugs
     blend with burning oak and maple wisps
as rakers chant their own sweet airs,
     “The colors surprised this year,
didn’t think we’d had the rain.”

So spare no lament for the maple leaves
     whose jubilant anthems,
raised beneath the harvest moon,
     herald their fall with rainbow alleluias.

*November, 2006

Flight came so easily
when I was a boy of seven.

I'd hover over sidewalks, cars and lawns
gliding on a sea of azure air
above my friends at play
and Mom and Pop talking on the stoop.

I'd circle over McKinley School (my school)
where the recess bell is ringing
and the creek by the edge of the woods
where I found the railroad flare
(my creek, my woods).

Flight came ever so easily
when I was seven (or was it eight?)
when the sky was autumn blue
and the world below was kind and true.

But in time, science grounded me,
said it was just a dream.
After all a boy can't just up
and repeal the law of gravity, can he?

Why yes, of course he can:
it comes so easy
when you're seven or eight
and the skies are right for flying.

*October, 2010

Courageous Phoenix, what do you know
of past and future conflagrations?
With wings afire, do you sense
the embers of your renascent soul?
Is your savage life-death vortex
as mysterious to you as it is to us?

Although I'll never fly on Phoenix wings,
or share your tortured falls and resurrections,
I feel I know you as a brother
for we all have Phoenix games to play
with each dividing and perishing cell
its own ancestor and descendant -
tomorrow's joys born of present sorrows.

Who among us has never tasted
the bitter gall of enmity -
or been driven to our knees
by the searing blade of failure?
But time is the most physician -
stirring new life from the ashes of despair.

Noble Phoenix, in our barren seasons
when scorched spirits tumble to the earth,
soar down from your blackened rock
and restore the feathers of our tattered wings.

*March, 2012