Landscape
Winter, you always seem a mean old bastard
as you blow cold air to put in the last word,
blanketing the earth with your icy scorn
until the land is bleak and blank and forlorn,
killing the old year and wiping it all clean
with your chilling whiteness, so deathly serene;
but I know why you clear the old canvas
with thick snow and ice all around to span us
as if lathering on a coat of primer
to cover the old art of an old-timer—
you work hard for your granddaughter, the Spring,
so she may start afresh with her coloring—
growing new flowers, (after you allow it),
dabbing hues in abundance from her palette,
she’s a master at landscapes, form, and light,
and you, the craftsman, set the easel just right.
The Messenger (Dedicated To Kansas)
Like Ahab hunting the White Whale,
I chart a course and set the sail,
hunting the world’s end, the wayward edge
where oceans plummet off the ledge—
for I wish to know the point where I
am at the threshold of the sky,
following the stardust in the wind
to dare the waterfall to send
a message in a bottle out
to the silent void, roundabout
the land, the sea, this spherical stage
of Man’s drama, his scripted page
written within us, in our blood
and ubiquitous, like the Flood,
and thereby reach a god’s willing ear
to witness now this woe-wrought sphere.
Bound by binary brinkmanship
and life but a brief, fleeting blip
within Strings, between Venus and Mars—
we are but puppets of the stars
in the long venue of this place,
this empty theater of Space
where stars are spectators so quiet
that we oft wish them to riot.
And so this message to the void
afore, or aft, we are destroyed
is but a letter in a glass urn
reaching the point of no return.
Tangleroot And Tressknot 