Black and Wide

Without, within — from whence comes all the noise?
The inner world is sketchy, black and wide:
To draw it right, you must have equipoise.
The lines need only be as you decide:
No other voice can question, or deride —
So build the landscapes where you’d love to dwell,
And make a temple of your citadel.

Within, without — these words are much the same.
The pale and thin becomes the black and wide;
The waters murmur softly, “none to blame –”
But other whispers follow, amplified.
A loving heart is still the truest guide
To where you’d love to — want to — need to be,
The seeing soul’s lost sanctum by the sea.

Kyrielle at Dawn

Across, beyond, and in between,
This is the place where we exist;
These limits we can’t contravene —
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

We see the sunlight on the rise,
But with the day, will it persist?
So much that seems is in disguise:
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

From long ago, the voices tell
The struggles of which lives consist:
To be — it means, to be unwell —
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

In music, and in memory,
In those last-held, and those first-kissed,
Are love and hope, life’s treasury —
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

A Sunset Rondel

A spiraling of evening light,
A quick declension into dark;
The murky and the recondite,
A glint from off the curving arc —

A staring, past the point of sight;
About to finally disembark —
A spiraling of evening light,
A quick declension into dark.

And though the leaf be fastened tight,
The dying day will leave its mark:
On those who guard a lost monarch —
A spiraling of evening light,
A quick declension into dark.

Rispetto By The Water

The salt air in your nostrils, as
The waves lap out their lullaby;
The soul that is, is one that has
A right to give up on the “why”

For maybe, it’s not ours to know.
It will, it must, it needs be so —
The way we feel, but cannot guess,
A pattern that is patternless

An Evening Sonnet

How many angry words are too soon said?
He reworks all of these, his long mistakes —
They rattle and they stab inside his head;
They gather into pools, and sometimes lakes.

Escaping does not quite seem possible;
The pools too deep, the lakes uncrossable —
And so they form a sort of slow revue:
The when and how, the why and where, the who —

So is this what a man becomes at last?
A parody? An anchor in the sand?
Or finally, just might he understand
That there’s no peace till there’s peace with the past —

    To sit and hold, to breathe, and to believe,
    And fade away like shadows of an eve

I see but only barely…

I see but only barely,
I hear, but just in part,
I do not reach for you, because
We’re meant to be apart.

I think I know the future,
And it will get here, at last:
Let’s just hope, when it arrives
It’s not chained to

The past

Last, Long Winter

I think of her that last, long winter:
How it was supposed to be —
Walking down that lonesome valley
Past the fence, and tree lines —

But you — you never knew her, did you?
Eyes that laughed at simple things,
The ludicrous, the painful (sometimes)
Even getting old —

How many roads within a lifetime:
Steps, missteps, and retraced steps —
The people we love best, but find
We barely knew at all

The sleep that comes the last, long winter,
Blankets clutched unsteadily,
Until the morning, down the road
Across the hill