Once

...once they were green fingers of grass
tapping, tapping
to the rain slapping spring
into the fields
of,

...once they were warm cushions of wind
whispering, whispering
to the love birds sowing summer
into the air
of,

...once they were turning leaves of alder
starving, starving
to the hunger compelling them to fall
into the earth
of,

...once they were buried feelings of loneliness
shivering, shivering
to the icy palms of Nature throwing winter
into the insignificance
of,

...once

Chalkboard (revised)

Seeking perfection can be a catalyst for success as much or more as it can be for failure. You try enough, you are bound to succeed. Yet by failing you temp arming your fears with failure after failure, each threatening to bring your walls crashing down. The best of us continue to fight because we have nothing better to do. But is it not also for the joy of the fight we wage this war? In winning we would be lost and suddenly stranded without purpose, but those momentary successes keep us going like a mouse hopping from one cheesy morsel to the next. In a way that is what this poem is about, a moment of complete failure followed by the bliss of understanding and meaning.

---

A blank page,
lines but no words

I scribble
just to
riddle the page
unclean,
but still no meaning,
no madge to show me
the way
to clarity

I bleed frustration
by balling up the sheaf
of paper,
an invitation to failure

A new page sits
in front of me

I press on, but think
no genuine thoughts,
no light shines
through dense clouds,
no sunshine
brightens my meaningless
day
with insight

So instead,
I draw a picture

I’m not
an artist,
but in this picture
I see
beyond the farce

Moments, hours
they slip on their cloths,
and only then do I
concentrate on another
blank sheet
of paper

Whereby confusion
left in the open,
scatters,
as my inner eye,
brightens

The words,
naked and alive,
they primp and preen,
sentence after sentence,
footprints,
through the sands
of my mind

Banner in the Sky

Wave to me, green pastures,
I am no longer asleep,
no longer among your children,
wave to me, green pastures.

Sweep me up, angels on the wind,
wrest me from the Earth,
welcome me as you would the leaf,
sweep me up, angles on the wind.

Weeping Earth, don’t cry for me,
lay me close to the heavens,
place me on this mountain slope,
weeping Earth, don’t cry for me.

Children of Air

This poem is about BASE jumping or anyone who has felt the tinge of thrill and fear in the arms of gravity.

---

Steel-blue waters bake in the sun,
where rivers of heat stretch out in curves,
revealing ghosts of wind walking out on cliffs,
shaking the precarious ministers of rocky cleft,
the prickly leafed tree,
the garnish of spiked grass,
the woody krumholtz with spider web branches.

Angels who are cast from heaven,
where land remains festooned along a mortal vein,
discover men not rooted to the land.
Earth is not their rapture nor their church of God,
they are divinities of the breaking moment,
they are creatures of the quiescent rush,
they are corporeal knights of our sleeping death.

As winged birds, they are joined in space,
those children of air jousted into gravity's clutch.