"There in the midst of it so alive and alone
Words support like bone..."  Peter Gabriel's  "Mercy Street"

Orion abandons the sky
dropping his club
casting his belt toward the horizon
Just once, for a moment, he glanced away
from exalted ****
his vanquished prey

He’d seen the picture—
A girl of sixteen
lying awake—muses in her head
eyes shut, arms thrown back
behind pillow
Tee shirt stretch across lean chest
Hips mingle with blankets
She is scattered there
among the minions of her hair
behind her mouth of unkissed words
____

McCaffery's Coffee is open late
He’s seen the picture
Muses in his head
His arm almost around her
Hers on his shoulder
Small—feather-light fingers
lift the hair of his neck
Reaching around her
his hand searches and slides
along her silk-draped hind
...and the view he has is amazing!
___

Music— and waves pounding and lapping
at the life he fears....

Little boat stranded in gray mists
till a thousand tiny birds alight
in a peppering and fluttering
stir of time
in greens of brine
as the sun pries through….
___

McCaffery’s is ready to close
but the owner, knowing
douses the overheads and turns away
leaving candlelight to crouch and duck
and blink in circles

How long and free we
are allowed to gaze....
so full of wind and riffling water
Stars above and stars below
blooming on the floral silk of night
Vespered lilacs exhale
Votives of warmth
beneath his hand
Silk sweating—
familial in their rocking

Distant lightning loosens eternity

Do harbor love for chatty Mockingbirds
Lead vocal of the Piney-wood , carrying
the news o'er the red hills , the peanut
farm and blue water grist mill
An audible question from the first morning
Chickadee , a quick retort from a Cardinal
in a Mimosa tree , sail the tepid current
mighty Blue Heron as Cottontails quietly feed the
Red Clover shelf , chirping Bobwhite graze withered , October
corn as iron vanes portend the coming of the Blueridge storms

Let the Earth receive the music -
of the lonesome eve calling , sung before cranberry ,
fuchsia , Monet renditions of sundown ,
before crystal garland evergreens , Hickory
tinsel , alabaster hillsides from the mortarboard
of 'Divine Creation' , odiferous rosin cementing
the grandeur of distant dark Sugar and White Pine
The conviviality of countless starlight from dew
wetted plain o'er boundless ****** night* ...

its been so long since I’ve written you down
and since, there have been other you’s that have
come and gone
like these seasons,
steady

so now it is Fall again,
the time last year during which my heart was aching
as you vanished from my side;
I stopped and watched as
you went;
you went so
slowly

i stand now, still abandoned
like a tree from its leaves
but I do stand,
and I wonder what you’re doing now,
but only for a moment
before I continue walking;
listening
as the leaves that were silenced
crunch beneath my sentimental feet.

The car will edge past the truck maybe
and maybe we'll survive this message
playing on repeat, apologies like daft lilies
and then you go ahead and tell me that you've never
learnt from your mistakes, or my mistakes.
That mistakes are only bad unless you change the order
of analogy. This experiment has been contaminated.
Now a fresh batch. Trust me, there's a point to this.
I'm counting back from a hundred and two
and you've got me standing in the middle of the highway,
blindfolded; this is what loving you felt like,
you said. But I think it was more dramatic in my head.
Nuclear fission and the seige of Dresden dressed
up playing Adagio in D minor; I'm dust. I'm dust.
I've become ash and misery and I'm trying to stay inside you
but you've been coughing a lot, and who's to say
you were holding your breath for something exciting,
I just know for a fact that at the end of this beep,
you'll know what to do and yet
you're not going to leave another message.

You can't lock yourself in
and then complain that nobody visits you.