To Claim the Sky

The cathedral of sky empties of prayers
When a pilgrim is wary of the ground again,
Who tiptoes its echoing vaults of wind,
Arched solid as the rains descend.

In the halls of sun, the houses of days,
With twilights burning along the wall,
All is drawn behind the night,
Storming, should one faithful fall.

The darkness is young, wiry of wit,
For raindrops pass in hoods of mist,
Lusting for the gold, the grime
The faithless donned in shadows kissed.

Felled phoenix, daunted in the clear,
The steeple appears long-painted past,
Who is to know the bells still toll
Lest a neighbor lends a feather, at last?

Silence

A constant gift in every ear
The oldest volumes be,
Read, and read, and read, (and read)
Till greater than the sea.

Replace one, and another comes,
The sweet wind's shawl to slide.
Lighting seeps the flame of frost,
The crackling forever plied.

Hold it close to you, and listen
Coldest where its secrets lie,
An ancient spell of purest words
Deserving no reply.

Try it one, as you may,
Choke, sputter, and see,
Through strongest spirits, on it flows
Yet no one's master be.

Remnants

Suppose I

could.

Suppose I could shake the longest, dryest of waiting tears until I'd never cry again, losing my reluctant love where it finds someone perfectly happy.

I smile, keep, keep walking, and it is gone. My dearest, my very last resistance, gone.

Watching.

Suspended in the sorrow that overtakes the wind for a long, long while, waiting, sitting on the meager shadows of rising and falling night and day. The cycle gets heavy, watching her dull, scratched reflection on the sea.

From far away, a tree grows where the sad little shame had been, already staining, bridging every little star to the sun and never, ever stopping. Built on tears, where the salt became the sand and the rolling, twisting sob burrowed deep and right through the rock, it wrinkles in disgust at the blushing sunset, and does not know how to smile.

Star to star, branches tip close as they can. To the others, they say. As long as this tree is here, no one shall fall, ever again. As long as this is here, every dreamer may walk forth, merry, on this thin, thin ice of a night.

Soon, there shall be a forever, stronger than the others, the little one hopes.

I shall touch where my master failed, and I shall glow in the night.

For all the dreamers, to sit where I break into the glassy night, I stay.

Beyond Magnolias

The sky opens widest,
Shy of any return, dancing
at the edge of another complete
Being.
Nobody watches, so slowly
when all the softness goes
seeping into ground.

Color walks forth, shedding
any and all pretense, shining
brighter than ever before;
The world is really still
when colors cease to quarrel, the best
of all shades shed the same.

Take another step back,
See the cotton thread wind
pulling all of us round, away-
Sheerer than any quiet sky,
they race down the horizon
in neck to neck harmony.

Early Morning Dreams

It's overblown world, etched
In ink and graphite
Miracles
Of endless avenues of dust.

It's never night, never quite day,
Blooming yet faster, faster as
The world draws upon itself.

Oh, to dream, to walk on lines,
Drawn split seconds, pushing
Every which way- up
across, and even in!

Someday, all will be drawn
As for the past years,
Into the waiting, the hollow
Pillars of salt and sand.

Still There

The moment's journey went astray
As the country road does bend,
The wildest run so very swift,
No one could ever make a-mend.

This dust, it rolls, so high and slow
Across never a straight post fence.
Why, it caught up to the sea,
Spent immortality, hence.

Your love is endless,
But a moment thought,
As it waited for an end.
Yet on the deepest summer night,
No map the stars defend.

Perhaps Endless, Perhaps Not

When is it, that the fog should clear?
The world speaks humble
To the future so dear.

To the future so dear,
Should the silence hence mumble
And itself not fear?

And itself not fear,
Says the dream who'd tumble
To the future so dear!

To the future so clear,
Go the toasts drunks grumble;
When is it, that the fog should clear?