"ashlar" poems
My new-cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
Great Overseer, I make my prayer.
If there be good in that I wrought,
Thy hand compell’d it, Master, Thine;
Where I have fail’d to meet Thy thought
I know, through Thee, the blame if mine.
One instant’s toil to Thee denied
Stands all Eternity’s offence;
Of that I did with Thee to guide
To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.
Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
Bring’st Eden to the craftsman’s brain,
Godlike to muse o’er his own trade
And manlike stand with God again.
The depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
One stone the more swings to her place
In that dread Temple of Thy worth—
It is enough that through Thy grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth.
Take not that vision from my ken;
O, whatsoe’er may spoil or speed,
Help me to need no aid from men,
That I may help such men as need!
4k
I am the river atop the mountain,
I am the boulders down below.
I am the jagged cliffs above,
I am the fine grains of snow.
I bend along the mountain
those rocks steer my course.
Rushing white river rapids
blaze the trails from thy source.
The mountain face,
sculpted by river sands.
Waves smooth sharp edges,
creator of lakes and land.
Persistence through ashlar and slate,
water rushes down the banks.
Long withheld at the stone gate,
bursting floods make their escape.
From afar, beauty to be bestowed.
Chaotic in all it's necessity.
I am that which must be controlled.
I am the will of adversity.
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 27, 2019 at 10:40 PM UTC
An ocean away in Colwyn bay,
a glamorous stranger is looking my way
tilting her head and lifting her shades,
her furrowing features are meeting my gaze
Shamelessly eyed from a platform away
As if she had something important to say
Then turning around with a curious frown,
she starts back towards her familiar town
To elegant houses of ashlar and brick
A terrace of Gothic adornments and frills
Victorian angles and white window sills,
becoming the specks which are dotting the hills
A town held aloft by a battered plateau
and anchored to ocean by columns of stone
A picturesque coastline, a spring getaway
The home of a stranger, her postcard landscape
The rattle of metal and the wheels over rails
The men wearing colours are starting to wave
My thoughts turning back to that taciturn dame
The din of the train means I'm pulling away
Jul 27, 2019
Jul 27, 2019 at 2:30 AM UTC
Is this the end of something new,
Something of nothing cascading through,
Grinding like graphite brakes to cessation of interaction,
No more love, just dripping remnants of perfect attraction.
So what of the world and its distractions?
And isn’t it ironic, even platonic.
Like daily doubles, we both picked up on it.
Was it our telepathy or just in my eyes alone?
My heart leading, my mind following your spells along,
The cold metal words still ring in my ears like a Tibetan gong.
Your smile had my resistance my barriers to love disarmed,
You said you melted in my arms,
Maybe that’s why my love alone isn't enough for forever,
Forever love on repeat, despite this stormy weather,
Rain without rainbows, wow, isn’t that clever.
But can nothing be something, is that, cunning?
Why did I at that last moment suddenly feel like running?
Running from your touch that made the very earth quake?
Reversing out of your life before daybreak,
Reversing out of your life before I ......break?
Does this gaze away mean we’re done?
Eye contact, a smile, it’s over, we’re gone?
I wished driving away, that in that second I was blind
Wish I never already made love to you in my mind
Wish I could erase …………4 months a week, 2 days of…. time.
Impossible, since your more than a memory
Your etched into the trapezoidal ashlar stonework of my fantasy
With you I felt a transparency, an urgency,
We could be living off what we didn’t need to grow
Now I hold on to what I can’t give back, you love me and I .....know.
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 11:28 AM UTC
You haven't told me your life story because I think you're afraid I'll notice the suicides which may or may not line your arms
Your neck
Which really needs to be kissed more by someone who'll at least admire the bruises
It's good to see you're branded by something you can enjoy
Why you let Them make you regret it is something I cannot understand
I won't allow it
Why you won't let me in is something I'll always understand
I don't want to
Your walls have been standing for too long because of things that happened so quickly
I am sorry I'm another addition to the ashlar
I wish there was a hole in the brick marked by my name and hair which still gets in your mouth
I'm glad to see you're not angry
I'm glad to see you were
Nov 13, 2014
Nov 13, 2014 at 11:34 PM UTC
Pine embellished by Cassiopeia arched over prone morning. Meadowlark laughed, cougars stalked shadows, crow deputies. Bent creek carried silt of spring, sigh of cedar. Cold mist, feathered cloak marked him of eagle and raven. He took part night, river’s depth in bent cedar boxes along grease trails over walls called cordillera. Distantly ships put into several bays. Raven gave up tricking salmon people, at Rose Spit called out first, men. Who had invented dance now demanded war. What speech there was was lament. Undone morning weeps bloodied. Anger-melted gold fills insatiable mouths, shames what night cannot hide. No more hand set to house front, no more ashlar of jasper. Night casts her spears, we have not even time to die. Flee hands which reach from river, children ghost small starving birds. Rejoice in crow’s carrion cruelty, Owl devour those we cannot smother in our desperate escape.
Look up beaten, complaining, supreme. Reconstruction begins in this torpor, a boredom purring heart cannot abolish. Inebriated with the impossible, go past mission outpost’s Gide and a Kempis to the lineage house of men. Hegel whispers I never did believe. Attar extend gender-inflected zero. In the wrong season glisten with sugary neoprene. Belong to at least two countries, Land of Goshen sours. Break into Quechua, haunt cruel Saturdays, look for amigo. Wheat field marries into lion’s eye. Ayacucho fanfares enclose the wind. White-breasted, black-winged, displace requiem. Recover lost chives, cottonwood’s inerrant perfume, shooting stars on the other side of the river. When mountain burns, Eyes-Are-In-Festival yields turquoise. Let him palmer drink iris dry. Sky falls, camas blooms, then this morning white tail flicker in low aspen, chickadee dee dee dee, chickadee dee dee dee.
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 1:52 PM UTC