Forests of green

It is easy to escape, easy to leave behind the weight of our social lives. There is simplicity in the actions of merely surviving and not burying yourself under the strain of existing within the constraints of work, city or town, and home. Easy to linger where there is no responsibility. You simply exist. Any temptation to forsake it becomes more and more powerful, cause you ache for familiar connections. In absence of them, you create others to replace. Less sentient, but in your mind, alive in these 'forests of green'.

--

It does not matter how
I came to these
Forests of green

For when eye peers through
foggy rhymes
into lucid features line
over line
I am rigged with awe
and allegories of dragons here
and magic’s I cannot break from

Of form and function I am
a man still
but my words
they are no longer - desirable
they are now images of
aromatic fragrances of
and no longer useful except
for recalling
what I was many, many moons
ago

This place has changed me
from what I was

I now meet and discuss ideas with
Elder Trees
Mossy Rocks
Crooked Streams
And Walking Meadows among so
many, many more like the
Lost Wolf and Shy Bear

And among all I am
known simply or not
so simply
as, “Snowbound Dagger
of Fire and Ice”

It was along this same track
I became lost
this track I travel now
and even if memories remain
I have changed too much to relish
returning
for time is a turning page
and my chapter is fixed
every word read forward
becomes magnetized backwardly
to the now I have languished in among these
shadowed and silent
forests of green

As swift as I loom over enlightenment
and escape
night's arrow of darkness hides my
way forward
and I slip back from this track I follow
back into the leaves
back into the moss
back where eyes do not linger
that do not understand
how I came here
or why I remain...

Paper bag of dreams

I've never been a fan of drinking, so much pain and suffering caused by those who look too deep into the bottle. This is a poem about alcohol and someone who did look too deep, where it took them, and what thoughts may be running through ones head, in thinking of their life and its worth.

--

Garbage, all of it

Take this city

It’s like the devil’s graveyard

No one wants anything to do with it

Only the worthless live here

No living at all

No death either

That would be thanked for

Life is a man’s living hell here

Starving

Freezing

Suffering from any number of ailments

The body rotting on the vine

And there I am

once something

now nothing

Whiskey in one hand -

My paper bag of dreams

Today the sky is golden

And the sunrise bold blazing

Like wheat fields back home

Reminders of living

When death wasn’t a knock away

And life was hoped for

As being long and happy

Now I only wished so I could be content

With this life now

The Alluvial Fan

Death Valley NP Dunes

***Definition of Alluvial Fan: the alluvial deposit of a stream where it issues from a gorge upon a plain or of a tributary stream at its junction with the main stream.

On a recent trip to Death Valley, I spent time photographing the dunes, exploring the canyons, and traveling through the desert. In a place with so much rock and sand, to imagine times when it was green and verdant is natural. For me, the high flying Raven's see so much. Birds, in fact, that may live over 50 years. No wonder they appear so witty and smart! Simply lacking our own comforts of home, it is rare we lived longer as hunter-gatherers. So who's wiser? This is a story of the wandering Raven speaking to the mountains.

--

Of the desert rides a bird of flesh and bone
“Don’t think of her alone,
but far from home.”
Out from the roiling currents she is carried
to the parched Earth

“Tell her oh Dunes of these effervescent mountains
in their vivacious youth!”

In the sand the flesh of washed-out youth
“But LOOK, look up and see
the mountains.”
black and beady eyes stare upward,
as feet crane as feathers are ruffled,
and what is seen is stark cliff
slapped against pale cheeks
and brow of old and elemental mountains

“Ah, but once they were green
and sculpting creeks ran through sculpted meadows,
basic units of beauty petrified
in those moments when youth’s thundering holler
was scattered by the scions of Natures brood
that roamed these precious crests of the Sierra.”

Reaching out, the bird gathers the arid breaths
of these thirsty, weeping denizens
whose anatomy has ground down the grottoes
like the stone that turns and turns
until it has ground itself to nothing
and sees what once was the Funeral Mountains
under seas of green and gracious trees,
isles of twisting and dropping rivers,
and corridors of broad and snaking valleys

“That which appears everlastingly
is as transitory as man,
as malleable by the drifting years,
as measured as her quartered seasons,
as day is to night,
the waning moon to tides,
we are all one day driven down the canyons,
shattered rock ground to sand,
and spread outwardly, an alluvial fan
beneath the sky of the Mojave desert.”

Turquoise under the moon

The sunset is a beautiful thing. Here I try to explain it and what it means to me.

--

as
stuttering
seconds
spontaneously erupt
in every hue
spatially entwined to

even as I peer outwardly
leeringly at
fin-AL-ity
clutching at my hearts rapture

I don’t watch the bleeding
martyrdom with eyes
of sadness
but the ephemeral beauty of
birth and smiling motherhood
expressing her
happiness and love

even in night’s lunar
wakening
the drama of
that magic
hour does not collapse
spontaneously

her soul is
not red and fiery
throwing flames
and flashing light beams
on waves of turquoise

there progresses the
fleeing shadows
pushed by
her dying breaths
enlightened by providence
and rebirth

The First of

The first wasn't the best
Except when I remember it
Like a dream it plays
Soon a rerun over and over I see it
And like film, I edit the facts
Play with the emotions
And make it different than it was

This changes me

Not my past
Rather my interpretation of it
And so while the first wasn't always the best
I remember the first of most things

The first day of school
The first kiss
The first date
The first car
The first day on my own
The first job
The first paycheck
The first day of College
As highlights in my life

They certainly were defining moments
So I remember
It is that alone that matters most
And makes you who you are

“Vermilion Skies”

Emerge from shadow through shadows
into wilderness isles and isles
where branch is folded over branch,
trunk into trunk,
grass into grass,
and starry night’s ambiance cast
by those cosmic audiences sparkling eyes
looming down long after
the death of vermilion skies
that illuminated the hours I wondered
along these forest lanes

Here now in ether of liquid coal
I wonder,
am I amid giants;
mountains with hearts as big
as these boulders I traverse?
Am I sightless
when subdued sounds
brave the cool, black airs
that imagination’s inks sketched
into omnipresent hues
of beast and ghost,
devil and demon?
Are my hands clasping the toes
of ancient tree,
masters of the groove
through the transitory centuries?

Or am I alone?

My heart herds fear and fascination
and it is incalculable
this nature
that thunders around me
and no matter my willing to grasp
and understand
I can’t help but yearn for light,
the buzz of bees and flies
and mornings of vermilion skies
for through and through,
the wolves that howl,
the elk that bugle,
the owls that hoot,
and the God’s that speak to me
in the spirit of tree
are too big and wise
for one not anchored into the soil
for the hours and hours
years and years
that wisdom needs to flower
and bloom

I am too hungry to wander beyond
where branch is folded over branch,
trunk into trunk,
grass into grass
to sink my fingers into the earth
to remain forever
among the isles and isles

Dream

“To work of ideas barely formed, one must dream to fill in empty spaces. It is important to build a foundation, even if mere wisps of airy dream are the brick and mortar.”