Breathtaking beauty settles before my eye’s
Palpable is this peace in a land where air is thin
While beaming brilliance, lights the skies

Rage is visible in the irate tides
Of the Rocky Mountain rapids crashing by
Breathtaking beauty settles, before my eyes

With a scent of bristlecone pines
Drifting on wistful winds
While beaming brilliance, lights the skies

Over the ridge valleys rest in dark disguise
As shade is thrown down from heavens above
Breathtaking beauty settles, before my eyes

Eager for this moment to last, time I do despise
As stars align in a language read by gods
While beaming brilliance, lights the skies

Omnipotent powers string these patterns
That rest above great valleys in masterpiece
Breathtaking beauty settles, before my eyes
While beaming brilliance, lights the skies

In the open space below the mountains
lakes and rivers, trees dancing with moss shawls and furry tips
the rolling breeze that bathes us into peace
Our surroundings that dictate our disposition

If we reduce it all to steaming rubble,
grey concrete and loud sharp horns
the peace dissipates
and though it is curious how we are affected from the outside in
if we challenge nature, we’ll never win.

Orange canoe leaves and castling roots
   and a potpourri of rocks and twigs and mosses
     hailed my pathway.
Fresh, white flowers mingled with their rusted sisters
upon the ground, like copper-splashed jasper.  
        The canoe leaves curled
as the white and rusted flowers tumbled through them
like toppled teacups and feathered, Victorian party hats.  
     Their christened sisters mirrored them among the boughs above
and talked loftily about the treetops
      as the fallen ones chattered amidst *******
      and the roots dividing the tables of their tea party—
unaware, and heedless, of how far they’d fallen.

Oh how my sorrows torture me.
Quiet room and dim light.
The silence does not comfort me.
Not in the way that I want it to be.

Where is the door that leads outside?
To fresh air and freedom.
To where risks are hid and excitement lives.

How I wish to go outside.
Inside I feel, It's such a bore.
Hurt and adrenaline does not belong here.

They belong out there.
To hurt and ****,
Save the hearts of the confused,
The unorganized minds,
And the bodies of those who thirsts
for the blood of their own.

I just want to go outside.
Where I know the are many crevices to hide in.
My fingers will be *****,
My mind will be empty,
My heart will finally feel content.
I just want to be free from worry.

In Algonquin, before the dawn
before they’re clouds, the fog rises
tucked under the echoing loons
above the fat smell of wet soil
before the day becomes day
before you are a person
and the light of day breaks
the green sky casts a hue
incubating the lake
until life becomes life
until you become human

In the hollow space inside the soul
It is the universe and the atom.
In a space of good fortune and rebirth, so close to death—
It is present moment and past; divine and crippling; boundless and mortal
Golden with ecstasy and layered in the decay of sorrow  
For a brief moment we are able to see it.
Silently we stare at everything that is
Nostalgia already dripping from every moment
pooling at our feet in the regret of lost time.

In an attempt to walk the path I had
Beaten bone dry with the
Soles of the sneakers I wore for years 
And years
I was stopped by
Overgrowth and foliage

It used to be mine
But time had claimed it for herself
In an attempt to put me in my place
Daring me to not relish in what
Used to make me who I am

In fighting my way through
The bushes and leaves, I was
Forced to surrender to the
Simple fact:
I have changed.

I stopped living on that
Dirt ground
And sitting on those four rocks
That divided your house and mine
To catch my breath
And decide my next move

The downcast shadows of the trees
Recanted to me the stories of
My former jubilation
And versed me in the
Games I had missed

I traced the stars with my cigarette
To find the meaning they'd hid from me
Since birth dropped me on this rock
To learn all they had to teach

I thought I knew when I
Jumped the puddles in the road
And the cracks in the sidewalk
To avoid broken
 backs and
Accidental swims

Exhaustion on my heels
I began my ascent to the
Canopy, holding the answer to my
Long-drawn inquisition.
Discovery drove me to this new creed:
I am stronger than my scars
Give me credit for.

I understood my dryness in a 
Fit of introspection and
Cold sweats and
Warm shivers,
My sobriety, my closest familiar

So I buttoned down the boxes that
Help me get to sleep
And said a few words about the friend
I used to keep at the
Edge of those woods
Back when growing up seemed easy
And nothing seemed too hard

The sun beating down on my face,
The gentle, warm breeze.
The smell of green plant life,
the stench of fresh mulch.
The cooling drizzle of summer rain,
the essence of wet concrete.

This is what I missed.