I don't know the rules. If I go looking
for grace and find it, what will grace

be but penance for my past, a silver
sinew-thread wrapping 'round old
            wrongs, gray hair for the
                        fickle.

I've naught but want for sweet release
from this history. The bombs ignored,
            repeating in gramophone static
                        dripping stiff

as wet bamboo. I remember someone
once sang here, once strung together

chords so sweet they rang like peace-
bells beneath cloudless sky. They've
            rang the bell upon my jaw and
                        done no wrong.

It's not so much unlike one's curiously
cold reception at a funeral. The cold
            and rain ****** at the skin
                        during graveside hymnal.

As long as the earth continues
its stony breathing I will breathe.

That which I cannot help but do.
Stuck between boulders, I sing.

When it stops, I will shatter back
into gravity. Into quartz.

Those that rake the meadow sweet with hay, embrace the land’s gift ‘till end of ray/
Toil, shadow hunting long, greeting sun with grin, and night as friend/
Hands chafed, lips chapped, skin kissed, shoulders leant, legs bent, chin high/
Eyes down, mind stretched out to the world beyond the valley walls of the lea/
Honest work? Perhaps.  Captive to what might be versus what will be?  Truth.
What happens to the rimrock hand when clouds of the west carry weather foul, blowing through swale, clearing chaff from air; A whirlwind of change and fragments, wrack and foam/
of the world, our world, your world swept down a path of less than least resistance/
Like trees razed on a hill, laying down to the wind, there is no choice in the matter/
Eulogizing change to change is staring at the sun and waiting for a wink/
There is no changing trajectory in flight, winds send to where they send/
Few still rake meadows sweet with hay, and never dream of what might have been.