When does nature turn to art?
Here he stands,
Raising hot dust from cold
Trying to fashion beauty
From brutish chisel
Strike and scratch.
Passioned blows
Seeking form, in form
Already there.
Not knowing when
These vain stabs cease
Makes him wonder.
We are crawling
Under the beams
Dodging flashlights
Without being seen
Yet still we crane to see
Through the darkened glass
Of who we want to be
Whispering to be opened
To be unwrapped before
The time of what may happen yet
Staying curled up like infants
Ball shadow flat against the wall.
In fear, of what we may become.
Oh, the whispers we might hear
if we stayed silent in the noise
listening to the audience
and not the sound of
our own voice.
The squeaking wheels
Are sluggish as they rust
The stamp of age scratched
On pitted path that’s wandering.
A line that can’t be thread or cut
Like the tin-dented rings of seasons
Marking joyous turn of the sun
Laughing when I hadn’t heard the joke
Or looked inside the strongarm jar.
In a bleached picture of unglued frame
Naked and kinked with over-use
Glasscracked in the prang and crash
Of hoisted eyes and start agains.
Once again, fresh cotton pressure creased
Smooth cornerered in turn and rough
But now in permanent tuckaway fold
Knowing that I am more than old.
I believe,
we are made of keys;
for locks that interlock.
The more I can open,
the closer we will get.
Arggggh! I’m always losing them.
The fallen trees
of who you were
hiding from today
are now an angry dam
holding back the roar and flow
where should be stream
and gulley tempered gleam.
The things you said
just tiny matchsticks in the swhirl,
or riverdust in the swell.
Like helpless ants in the water -
massed behind the downhill pull.
Worry is the purest form of prayer
a mantra in the grey of wavering
the voiced meter of our concerns
quoting the prophets of doubt.
Before sleep,
I heard the tinkering of rain
and it made me wonder.
Where did the first raindrop fall?
On garden, chalk or tarmac path?
In quiet kinship with the ocean?
Bouncing off the shoes of drunken love?
Ahead the fray of cloudburst,
succumbed in gravity of night?
Before, somewhere.
You MUST have felt, or seen, or heard.
The velocity of a solitary liquid crown,
shattering diamond-like in impact tears.
The lead in winter’s swarm.