Quietous* tree,
That hath sought
Found to bleed
And from torment wrought,

Thou dost despondent stand
And thy veins doth shed
And bury in desolate land
The tears that thou hast bled.

Thine heart's own verisimilitude
Beats within thy stiff breast
And all thee hath eschewed
And thy plot avoid lest

Thy count'nance rear'd
And thy misery form'd
Within all whom thee fear'd
And their joy harm'd.

Quietous* tree,
Son of agony's lot,
From the pain within thee,
What horror hast thou begot?

i was disconnected from your umbrella,
as we strolled
like organist thumbs akimbo
over octaves of impenetrable silences
that lay as shells at our feet, unperturbed.
your free hand, bound to mine.
enslaved to the pendulum
of our quietous
tandem.

we note the long shadows swaying in the corona of emerging contrasts... we go arm in arm now...inhaling the fumes
of our unspoken truce. reveling in the sanctity of our bond
without losing a thread in our poncho
to a snag in the deluge.... or raindrop teeth.

we continue in our way.
conjoined in our congenial orbits.
disrobed from the
inside-out.
two columns of mute serenity...
stalled where the bridge
and the railing; conspire to frame the stream below
with the moment of our pregnant
pause.
as seen from ground zero in a cataract
of awe and epiphany.

the mist from stones dashing about like trout
draping our skin in flecks of Indra and glass spider eyes
laughing at all our jokes, before the punchline
finds your Abbot
to Costello.

we are drenched in a thousand specks of mirror.
with tide pools in our crows'feet... and all
the continuum of glory...

the unvarnished fathoms of our symbiosis
and the dignity of our invulnerable
Haj to the Mecca of our Peace.

II

i was disconnected from your umbrella
as you never believed in -
having one.

so i embrace precipitation
with all the ****** delight
of a pagan in the company
of His oracle.

your antlers
shedding skin
and divine.

my spirit
dwelling
in a
jar

full of fireflies.
for true.