This morning I awoke with a cluster of words resting in the palm of my hand, my fingers tracing their gentle form like the decades of a rosary. On the tip of my tongue a song, a story, a fable of experience, existence, and eternity lay dozing.

There I floated between my inner and outer worlds, an exquisite confluence of wakeful consciousness and drowsy carelessness, until daybreak shook the last of sleep from my tousled dreams and my verses disintegrated like dust into the ether. It was at that moment, when the cool breeze through the open window intervened and the thrum of traffic in the distance drew me out from beyond the covers, that I lost my poem.

I know it will return: as droplets of rain on window glass, or as threads of loose cotton on a frayed cushion cover, in the rhythm of a lazy Sunday afternoon, or in the sigh of the ocean’s flow. All of these are mesmerising in their effect, some intangibly soulful, others enticingly tactile. All are enough to quiet the chatter of the quotidian mind and allow the delicate operations of the creative imagination to reign.

Only then, will I attempt to commit my words to paper...and you shall read them here.

One regret
for all those farm pigs
wiggling their toes
one last time
on that ride
to the market
wiggling, wiggling
like there's no  tomorrow
taking in the waning hours
thoughts of their sow
and babies left behind
gasping the last breath of air
and life
the ride, the death march
the winding turns
the roar of a diesel engine
the small cracks in the crate
light filtering in
bringing tears to their eyes
the saddest eyes ever
and the final curtain
for somehow they know
the fattening
destiny's child
this piggy went to market
was a storybook fable
facing all around them
the others know, too
their hearts beating
down
when the truck stops
sorry
not for coffee this time …
collectively
squeals  abound
the crates perspiring, thrashing
the bounty of life
on the dinner table
the cruelty of such
for no cargo is overturned
as the hum of death
nears
sound of the blades
soon rises above the prayers
darkness kicks in
taking in the ecosystem
sadly
regretfully
as wiggling toes stop

Logan Robertson

9/02/2019

.
One day gone in the long great forest
Of the ancient world, wolves alone
And mighty hungered with true kin
Stalking the tundras of the snow drifts
And all their prey, with cautionary eyes
Moved in heards and flocks swaying
With the sounds of the forest floor
And the spearing grasses.  The wolf
Was his own master, free, unbounded.
A great spirit, brother to the moon.

One dying day, when the bushes burned
They came upon the garbage dumps
Of early man.  Their smoke was laden
With the smell of fresh ****, small skins,
Animals, ended trail, and salted death.
Many wolves circled in fear, their pits,
Only one or a few tasted the left overs
The easy scraps and bones, tailings,
The elder pack would not stoop for.
These few unguarded wolves morphed
And mated with each other, their mane
And fur, soon was tamed, soon became
Mottled and brown no silver remaining.
This was the fall of the wolf, not man
And the moon turned white, when wolf
Became dog.
.

.
On winsome plains of dusted origin
Gods spoke: “Let fresh, sensate flesh
Incarnate, let questioner, move lost —
Come.” And in birth was live funeral,
Wrested body of spirit, seer of mercies.

In a story set to flame for children —
Old man poet writhed on a new cusp
Betwixt madness and old firmaments,
Where spinning globes set time adrift
And mankind undulated like sad song.

Hush poet would never know in sight,
That meaning shared time with industry
And all the buildings that vibrate are cold,
Where tall suits shimmer and music dies,
Death knows it’s place among the wreaths

For tall tales are sodden by rainy graves.
It is better after — that poet was shaper
Mostly in death, like shining Phoenix,
Like concrete angels haunting chapels,
Or mythical creatures populating fable
As ancient groves of tree reach skyward.
.

.
I see myself in you—
With a spike we two spoke out,
Vagaries of wind, verisimilitudes
And the moon gives us her light.

Black bird, black robed Druid,
We both are spinning round
The hills draped in psalms
Of the oak and windy leaves.

Your words, I hear, go unsaid,
My utterings babble, ring in a rill,
Cold and cascading to mosses,
Bleeding from a lone escarpment.
.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                            
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'
.