welcome Winter
straw sky
Straw sky
Westerly
Moonless, Sunless, Starless
Leaveless trees pointing gnarly fingers
to the heavens
deepening into darkness
Frayed and tattered dreams
Lucid praying
A feeling beyond touch
Beyond fear or sadness
A feeling unlike hope
Without reason
Formless
Yet delineated
Like constellations.
I make motions with my hands,
Move my skin into contact
With ineffable realms,
Move with the oozing miasma
Creating signs in faint luminescence.
Bit by bit they encompass
the night's horizon.
But there is more.
It comes to me in dribs and drabs,
Droning, encircling, swooping in and out.
I organize a study chamber
Pull out maps and rulers,
Set my quill to taking notes.
Images engaged in excited conversation
Pull me in to their heady company.
I can feel the sky breaking around me,
Bits of colored prisms falling.
Make a wish.
Wintry Forecast
White denotes purity,
cold somber reason.
Winter's the season
turning inward,
reflecting light.
Sunbeams on drifting snow
cast shadows, expose
past images layered below.
To see, to feel, to breathe
all luxury. To hold,
transmit as manifest energy.
To paint upon translucent canvas
liminal etchings, private muses
generously revealed.
Identity refined, re-gifted,
planted in potent fertility.
Visions, cantations,
the tinsel of starlight;
the subtle scent of frigid night;
the feather touch of eternity.
Let me fall into velvet voice, enchanting form,
move with conscious rhythm;
caressed within words’ and worlds'
mysteries.
Cozy beside home’s translucent, receptive door,
wise old fire djinn awhirl in sumptuous fantasies.
Grab tight to this wondrous globe of fortune,
shake for your life, your destiny.
Snow descends, flies within desire's fortress.
Light, free, prism-pure, soothes, excites.
Colours collide, glow, sparkle, entice eyes.
Lost in extreme streaming radiant stars emit molten fire.
Resplendent figures morph through incandescence.
Weather Vane
Wintry White lace
dribbling through my mindspace
etching out photographs
unknown to my sight
one simple demand
worrying my grand plan
how to follow laugh lines
in flight out of fright
Juries listen closely
to tales out of turn
spun so very grossly
it's very hard to learn
what is True
What to do?
Singing of silence
doesn't stop the violence
dancing 'neath the Moon
never keeps out harm
transfixed in wonder
still we may blunder
but caught up in the tune
in the moment in the form
what seemed so important
dissipates into rain
into storm.
For Julie
The Temple Bells sound clearly.
Early morning misty mountain rising.
Pale moon to jolly alpine sun.
Soft blues & golds
throughout the Valley.
And, hark! Hear the bells
over hillsides, rockslides,
slip of skis, powder peaks,
& rime held skies.
That frost smell, plainly
on that open mountain day
& no one around but enticing odor
of clean virgin snow.
The darkside of the moon faces shyly.
Sly shade moored under awaits her cue.
Anticipation pure with mirth.
& Night comes quickly.
Icy stars blank out now pallid sun.
And moonbeams twinkle - oh la!
Pawprints mar niveous path.
The mountain creature stalks.
But soon hides & shivers
in providential crevice of warmth.
Vestal white reigns high.
Crystal-clear
crystal stars
celestial tableau.
Snowflake ribbons, cloud dust,
shatter into mirror-images & gone!
Scatter, swirl
Eternally.
twinkling
Twinkling snowflakes in cold dark night.
Wishing, laughing, taking fancy's flight.
What are the visions your snowflakes bring?
What are the songs your carolers sing?
Where is that land -- secret in your mind --
surging seas hold strong, daring winds blow kind
and everything turns up right in the end?
Where is that place, and who is the friend
counting snowflakes across that broad, brave sky?
Who is the playfriend;
who is the I?
Twinkling snowflakes, I wish I may
Send warm, healing enchantment by dream-drawn sleigh.
A Winter Parable
Two old men sit
wrapped in wool, contemplating a frozen stream.
Their memories soar out past yesterday's horizon
to youthful pleasures and dismays.
Yes, time has been harsh as the coldest winter;
and beautiful as late night snowfall that
covers the world in symbolic purity,
sets off
strawlike, colorful northern herbs
against a star and moonlit sky.
To know profoundly, we need not be old,
only of a romantic nature.
To share these epiphanies,
we need only be in love with life.
Before It's Over
They say in dreams a house is a metaphor for a life.
Windows open to the world, mysterious eyes seeking snowfall,
slush debris, snarls of auto travelers rushing into night.
Hidden inner rooms may appear, unsought buried treasure.
Deep within decorated walls, a smiling child painting with excrement.
Dimpling, she offers scent of flowers never known to earth's earnest soil.
Silly dreams, silly imagery, skillful denying;
making much of
a molehill on alpine ground.
Mountains are metaphors for achievement.
Struggling like Sisyphus, discovering like Pythagoras
basic relationships on which to build.
Empires, like species of mystic birds
emerge from smoldered flame. Flogging slaves to
roll those rocks from imperial graves up the peaks of glory.
Like family, and its social cognates, enslave to stories:
"This is who we are."
February snows through conflated years.
Fear was my ally, hailing me on, hugging
with glorious laughter, carrying unsure steps through
onerous trails. And those ebullient ecstasies of survival.
Drunk on the gold that surpasseth science or light.
Touch the cold sting, letting the song sing through me.
Do you?
Feel the music? Abandon your amygdala to dance free
awhirl in a swirl of laughing snow?
In dreams, inchoate, unremembered, do we play in those
moments of bliss to keep us balanced, to give courage in a life
less lived, less honored?
Old, glazed-over eyes seek momentary solace, look long,
longingly, into a silly mist of snow beyond windows closed
securely against the cold. Dream world revealed,
in the interplay of eyes and mind.