Near

Finally the

Quiet, 

I've used up

Every 

Shred for the fray I have;

If I don't listen to

This quiet I won't know what

I've been 

Feeling

I recall the 

Colors of a memory,

Sounds I've heard

Sometimes 

Just outside 

Perception,

Pulses of the 

Ground shifting, and

I'm 

Beginning to 

Find my footing 

Feeling into Night

Cresting the hill to the one

Rising behind the red barn

On Updyke Road, 

A fire of burning moon

Etched my sending-lines in gold,

As I bloomed into

The glowing half-orb,

Illuminating the architecture of

Bare trees in winter, the road

Rounding onto Stillwell and 

The sheen into a troubled heaven

Comforting turmoil, regret, carrying

Trepidation and loneliness into

The deep hills that bridge this

World and the next, folding 

Me back into a slow dance along a

City sidewalk in a moss of 

Still remembrance.

Three AM

You get old

And you think you're 

Not beautiful 

Anymore 

And you look outside

And you see ages of living 

And constancy

And the trees bloom such

An architecture

And the land rolls its

Sublime contours

And then you begin

To instruct yourself in 

A miasma of light 

And dust and mist 

It floods your heart

Into seeing 

Beyond sinew and pulse

Into the grace of infinite

Looking out my bedroom window

As I try to calm myself 

I see, yes, there is always 

Moon in some part of the sky

And the map of the great dome

Is there for the taking

And no point at all to be old.

In this life, it does not matter.

I am that moon

That sun. 

Those stars. 

That sky.

We are.

We were.

We always will be

Until none of this is 

Anymore. 

Ways of Seeing

I take a picture

In my mind's eye:

The snow of the night

On the snow covering the night
As far as I can see, these fields.

I breathe deeply, 

Breathing, I see the 

Chiaroscuro. 

Not so long ago

I'd perhaps have said it's 

Negative.

Now no such thing,

Nor no such thing 

As black and white, for 

Without chiaroscuro I could not 

Live in color, as beauty is only
Perfection in the grey mist of 

My floating, carrying world, 

The one I choose to carry 

As best I can, 

Mystic symbiosis, 

And so whatever I do

Or say becomes just 

Coloring my life

As I see it,
I guess through

The shadows, though 

I already understand quite a bit 

About the highlights, and I 

Understand our this,

About the small, disappearing 

Journey.