Driving at Dusk

The road stretches out ahead,
diving down an Ozark hill
only to jut upward in the distance,
a far-off gash in the horizon
covered in all directions
by a landscape of trees
still clinging to the last of their adornments
against certainty of winter departure.
A fiery mix of gold and orange and pink
hovers just above in the frigid November sky,
compressed by the purple descent of night.

And as I navigate the landscape,
I thank the trees and the night sky
for reminding me that ends are necessary
if we desire to know new beginnings.

Gray Morning Musings

Morning cold painted on an easel of clouds,

soundtracked by applauding raindrops.

A warm sweatshirt,

A cup of cheap coffee,

Elliot Smith on repeat;

Today I reject fluorescent lighting

and a million other falsehoods.

I've heard others accuse gray of being uncertain,

a lack of commitment to day or night...

and I disagree.

Some days the sun sells lies

as cheaply as does darkness.

On a frigid, colorless, rain-soaked day,

the mind is laundered, washed, cleaned;

synapses slowed, it once again takes notice

of simple blessings...

A warm sweatshirt,

A cup of cheap coffee,

Elliot Smith on repeat.

Thirty-Two

32
When just sixteen, I knew it all;
   by twenty-one, I'd learned the rest.

At thirty-two, I have the grace
   to forgive youthful foolishness.

All Things Breathed Into Being

A poem I've worked on lately...

All things breathed into being,

God crowned creation with approval

yet was not satisfied 

to charge the man, 

"take dominion alone."

So from dusty flesh

He formed her,

she who would be

more a part of man removed

than when she was his rib.

He knew her.

She knew him.

Both were known.

I've known you.

You've known me.

We've both been known.

But prone to wander alone,

we go apple-picking where

Serpents lie,

and in our fig-leaved solitude,

one flesh begins to feel as two.

Oh, to shed concealments

born in shame and lack of faith,

souls, thereby, freed to mingle.

Oh, flesh of my flesh, 

bone of my bone,

to be naked and unashamed!

Nostalgia...

One of my all-time faves.  Poems like this are why I love my job.

Piano by D.H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of a song                                      

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.    

           

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato.  The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.