Walking in Wilderness

Looming shadows fall upon our day
as eventide takes all, and sun-glow journeys
on. Yet, later still an after-light
will haunt the sky and creep upon
its vast still heart.
First barely seen,
bright sunrise steals
then kills
the desert’s cold of night.

Does the Child live here?
Yes, even He must sleep in womb’s wet blackness
before He rushes out
to rise and dance in day.

Light and dark together dwell
within this deep-drilled well we call
our world. Both must live as one
for us to see, eyes opened widest.
A lamp held high
illuminates a dusty, cob-webbed
attic room in such a way. All remains
invisible
without darkness.

Yes, in glory, someday
sun and moon will die
in flame. So then the Man
will dance
anew, and what of us?

We’ll all be free
to live eternal far
beyond these desert
sunset days.

The Stone

He sits within my dreams,
a troubled tinge that tosses me
and throws my covers aside.
I dwell on him sometimes
and run from such a thing
in thoughts.
His glaring stare looks down
upon my daily ways
like searing sun
strikes heat
on desert dunes.

Always seeing, never leaving,
this stalker walks
and watches behind me.
At times, he catches bits and parts
of my fleeting, flitting shadow.
He jeers and jabs my every effort
till only tatters stay behind
to tell me
of a darkened day.
His breath is rank
and stinks of rat-filled sewers.
He won’t go away, though
I shout at him and try to strike
his bony face.
He’ll only gaze,
and I know he’ll stay
until I pay his price.

Those who mocked my workings
or ransacked me for the taking
must one day also find him,
whether they’re waking or still in sleep.
He’ll seek and take each one
to a place where echoes
fade to ghosts.
The ones who tore away at me
and foes unfeeling
will meet him too
in burrowed blackness.

Will you bear my money there
or take my talismans to him?
Are you to carry my close attentions
into his constant smile?
Can you still taunt me
with lips so stitched and sealed
forever still?

We will melt into one,
molded by him
to make marshy earth.
Rushed to his realm
among roots of trees,
we’ll gather there,
whether by will or from waste.
Each in turn will eat
his hollow dirt
and inherit his blank testament.
Following scores of forsaken footprints,
one by one, we shall wallow
in sodden, shallow soil.
Find us beneath
his half-buried stone.

The River’s Children

Liquid-like hills of the Klang River
recline around her cloud-veiled valley.
Low-lying light reveals
masses of restless people,
rising slowly from their blank and blinded night.
They walk or wind about on roughened roads,
a cacophony of multicolored cars and buses
or ceaseless cycles.
Hordes cascade out
to take their toilsome day.

Many pious and impassioned faithful
cry out with anguished, wistful prayers,
seeking to save themselves
from a postponed certainty of Sheol.
Others simply wake, avoiding prayer
to take a faster time to get to where
the checker-board streets will bear them.
The rushing seeming feral-driven seekers of work
stop in roadways clogged
as rivers dammed by heavy rain’s debris.
Are those who don’t pray
damned as well by hardened tasks
grown tough and cold as shards of clay?
Still, highways push the steel-imprisoned minions,
like flash floods rushing down
their rain-filled ways.

The Klang River still wanders softly,
silently through the valley
among her orphaned children:
Rounded ridges, carved roadways,
and peoples living their days.
Syrup-like, its green-gray waters
ease great silted burdens into the sea.
Like all of us,
for sure, each drop will one day pass
into a still and darkened depth.

Desert Wanderings: Thoughts

You and I see
shadows fall upon our destined days.
Eventide takes all,
as sun-glow journeys on.
Then, later still, pale after-light
haunts sky and creeps across its vast
unquiet heart.

Past barren night, appears another glow.
First barely seen,
bright sunrise steals
then kills
the desert’s darkened cold.

So, the cycle courses on
And carries us along.
We only rend its grip
when our own sure sunsets
sever all.

I ask
about a child.
Yes, even this one slept in womb’s wet blackness
before he dared rush out
to bask and dance in day.

Light and dark together dwell
within this deep-drilled well we call
our world.
Each soul must meld the two as one
before sight dawns with eyes
made fully wide.

In some past time before,
I once explored
a dusty, cob-webbed attic room.
Holding a candle
high, I saw the place
anew, allowing restless
shdows to show my way.
All
remains unseen
without the dark.

On some appointed date unknown,
sun and moon will die as one,
with all of earth aflame.
The child,
then grown, shall
dance anew.

More must await us after.
What shall illuminate our pathway
during that endless, rushing no-time
of stifled stars?

Lightened or no,
we’ll wrest a way
to live on and
dance through endless space.
Then, I say let’s wander
far
beyond these bounded desert
sunset days.

Mocking Bird Song

We sat on moonlit craggy
rock-dome; its granite face
turned outward toward
enshrouded valleys.
I felt your grief,
unspoken,
yet so real
as if a marker
stood between us.
The quiet stone sank
deep into your heart
as in a well
without an echo.

Night surrounded us
and wrapped each ponderosa pine
in silver stillness.
The shadowed wilderness
gave not a hint
of sad remembrance.
Yet I knew what images
lay close
beneath your wistful smile.
So we watched the sky
change from blue to indigo,
then black.
Twilight,
like a curtain drawn
across the mountainscaped horizons,
hid the day.
Its last, long sigh
was lost
in gray-hued past,
unreachable,
as the hard escarpment
underfoot.

What could I speak
to pierce this wall
of tears?
The lunar orb
had not an answer,
but shed
its lonesome whiteness
on your face.
The softened light
seemed here to paint
your features
with a shaded
distance,
far beyond my touch.

God, where have my words
flown off to?
Grant me speech
to meet
such sorrow.
My answer was a memory
that here I share with you.

I’ll tell a winsome story
of my far-off homeland, Tennessee.
In this fabled place,
there is a bird.
we call the mocker. He speaks not
from himself,
but in mere shadow-voices
copped from others.
Yet, as a child, I heard him clear
in early morning,
carol loud his own breathed spirit.
He did call out
with all his grace toward misty space.
There, soon, a lantern sun
would break in two,
the eastern sky.

In brighter times,
the mocker hides this other self.
Instead, he shows it
just before the dawn
with long, enchanting songful cantilenas.
Joyful, loud, in ecstasy
he greets the coming day.

Arise and sing,
my mocking bird,
sweet loved one
of this other time.
Put off your mask;
fly free
to mountain peaks.
Come laugh with me.

I’ll tie your griefs
around the wings
of my tiny mocking friend.
Yes, then I’ll tell him:

“Take my loved one’s burden
to the highest branch
of yonder Ponderosa pine.
Sing it out
above the treetops.
Bear such mourning
and transform it
into songs of life a-borning.
May this new-found voice
soar far
above the clouds,
and let its sound ring out
for all of time.”

For You

Like drops from a soft spring rain,
the tatter sounds keep tapping at me.
Thoughts of you still lap about me
like dripping waters washing round
my feet. The trembling streams aren’t enough
to carry me off but make me wonder:
“Might they want to?”

Finding a Way

I lay in bed that night,
watching auto headlights
flicker on a wall.
I thought,
Could you be mine?

Sounds of freeway-hardened, speeding
truckmen echoed in from midnight.
Wildcat calls that crossed the city
prowled through my darkened room.
Will you care?
I thought.
My heart beat fast
from wondering where that path
would lead.

I began in sunny morning
on a prairie highway.
Mountains rose,
bare monuments reminding me
of Titans’ battles
fought to the death
in the ancient days.
Sentinels of a gone forever
cast down here,
as quiet guards
on watch above me.
They lined a dim, heat-gray horizon,
with each scraped-down rockface
rising.
Reaching cliffs seemed to try and catch
whatever moisture
that might fall
still
from a blue-white dusty sky.

Will you see
and freely take
or turn
away?

Soon I found you
at the desert’s edge
by a place of sand and sagebrush haven.
You bore me off to show
a vast arroyo
panorama
to my eager eyes.
There a river chorus
sounded and fell
through a wind-rock whited well
in a canyon gorge.
This place where mountain split in twain
to baptize plain and city
enfolded us
within its shadow.
We stopped to rest
by water’s edge.

What will be
your answer?
Could you ever
stoop to take my
hand
in yours?

So there, amid the waters’ glittering wonders
I bestowed my words,
while foam and breeze
rushed wild
over nearby boulders.
The airy sunglare hung there lazy
over white-rapids’ restless
hazy motion.
Mayflies flew about our heads
like children at their noontime play
of leapfrog games,
in free abandon.

Strange, my words
I don’t remember,
but even now
I know.
I told you of my
wish.

As I watched the river’s
bright reflected lights
dance
in your eyes,
I knew.
That day we would begin
a joyful journey
ever hoping, seeking, talking,
becoming one.

Requiem for an Old Friend

We leaped across rocky ledge-parts,
seeking a secret veil of water
shadowed in sacred Yellowstone.
Camping together, we huddled against
cruel cold that caught
ice-barren wasteland winds.
Watching whirling air,
we saw dusted devils blow through
deep-carved canyons.
They howled their coyote
wistful-throated wails
past red-rock sandstone.
We climbed weighty slabs of slated
rocks in layered creek-carved labyrinths,
betraying eons of earth.
Bones of living things lay there,
long interred before
the birth of human minds.
I had never witnessed the West before,
and he showed me its
wild-edged ways.

In college, we laughed
with our women and other friends.
The ladies smiled,
and some men fought
or marched in dour defiance.
Learned ones stood
before us and taught strange,
tortured histories
of tarnished, vanished times.
We wasted days and drank,
listening to music loud,
lusty and luminous.
Running mental courses
through restless thoroughfares,
our sprinting spirits drifted.
Yet, they lifted upward and proud
together.

In later life, we parted,
picking pathways
distant and drained
of precious things we prized before.
He called it “God’s country”
where he stayed, our home,
but I strayed far
from Tennessee.
Visits and talks
grew fewer and fell to none.
Finally strangers to one another,
we quieted ever more
until no voice could cross
the void between us.

Late in nights’ long sleeplessness,
I thought of him at times,
seeking but finding no solace
in his absence.
A spirit lay beside me,
whispering wondrous tales
of sweet sequestered places
where we ran as one before.
Younger, fonder days paraded
dusty, down through darkened hours.
Restless remembrances
skewed out like skeletons
from fallen coffins.
My thoughts conjured friends and fun
as if from far-off planets lost,
where younger suns shone bright
on seas’ forgotten shores.
At last, the moon set black
within that seared-looking
barren space before dawn.
Its face revealed failed remnants
of a faded firmament
pushed far
beyond my grasp.

News came to me he was gone.
I paused to hear a shutting door
sound solemn far within me.
His smile would be no more,
nor would I know his voice again.
A flame went dark,
and blindness
sealed the snake-like passage ways
that pierced those far-flung
reckless, roaming years.
That same fire left me too,
and only an aching stayed,
reminding me of an empty place,
something in my gut
now ripped away.
Numbness and pain
thrashed within,
as if a spinal sprain’s convulsion
spread throughout my limbs.
Just the knowing
was like a torrential mudslide,
dragging needed highways
downhill deep into crushed
and crumbled dirt.

Today I recall a still-hidden
waterfall, rushing clear and coursing
down a cliffside.
Two men beheld it then,
testifying to its tender,
white-graced tracery.
Waters welled into a misted gorge
and filled a glassy bright,
light-crested pool
forever pure and free.
In dreams I drink there,
bathing naked, aware of
things those hollows keep
from everyone else.
Staying long in sentinel shadows,
I rest alone.

A Day Remembered

Easter lingered late and long that year
in Tennessee,
while my family rested
under leaf-filled maple limbs.
The tree perched creature-like,
rooted amid some garden rocks,
and reached its tendriled arms
to scratch the sky.
Surrounding shade enshrouded us
and helped our after-dinner rest
give rise to idle jest and tales.
Words faded into silence,
crushed by locusts’ buzz
and summerish hot, still,
suffocating air.

We children rushed by
with harsh and hardy shouts of:
“Let’s play softball.”
So despite the sun, some took the dare
and followed us to a field
left fallow on my aunt and uncle’s farm.
We played in weeds and mossy mud,
running, sliding our dirty way
through April’s dampened earth.
Shouts and spit mingled with cheers,
echoed among serrated, snake-like hills.
Then, a sudden surprise
snatched everybody’s eyes and ears.
I hit my first-ever home run there.
All faces searched above,
showing rawest shock at such a thing.
I walked the bases slowly,
with arrogance only a boy of ten could bring,
and like a strutting rooster,
finally found my way to home.

I remember now those so beloved,
who played or lazed with me that day.
Almost all are gone.
Although I didn’t know it then,
many dark farewells lay hidden ahead
to touch me each in time.
They only left fast-fading trails
like footprints lost
in far-blown snow.

Some stretched before me cold,
waxen dummies made up
with coffin-covering colors
framed by fluffy, fine-placed flowers.
Others went with only words,
among black-bordered print
on backs of news-gray papers,
where just a name remained.
Often dreaded letters
littered my dining table,
heralding in envelopes and hounding script
penned, tear-stained stories
of their passing.
Phone calls came to share,
with hushed, near-whispered words,
telling me when or where
and who was now no more.
Saddest were the ones who merely disappeared
beneath a blank horizon.
So many lives blinked out like empty suns,
setting their final days
in a gutted galaxy,
black and far beyond our ways.

Decades sprinted into dust
and silent shadows.
One morning I awoke, aching within,
to know I had no home.

Yet, even now,
I remember hitting that ball.
It sailed, careening skyward
as if above the curling, cat-like lazy clouds.
For a moment, I thought it maybe
vanished
in bright and breathless blue.

Communion

My loved one, your face greets me in the morning
from silent pillowed mooring
of soft, unharried sleep.
You’re unaware
of slatted light that seeps still inward,
to invade the quiet room
as mist steals in from rising tides
toward Big Sur’s mythic coastline.
Careless dust motes dance
like a thousand daylight fireflies
above your unfurled form.

I pray,
“Dear God, be ever with you.
Guard your soul and reveal
to you
the proud iron-girdered strength
of my love,
unbounded as the stars.”

You stretch, dozing cat-like,
with generous yawn and akimbo arms, thrust legs
that force bunched breasts and muscles to awake.
Your back unfolds like slow unrolling furrows
of wave-corrugated waters.
They flex like ocean ripples seen
through a soft sun-haloed fog
as water washes up on craggy boulders.
Your skin’s like that,
and yet so soft, inviting.
The tightened flesh pulled down across full
buttocks now swells out
and pushes upward
to receive.

A single hand spans intimate space
between us
to explore the meadow freshness
of my unmown, rounded chest
with nipples tight and hardened
as acorns.
You scratch and rub each hair
until I almost feel the fire sparks
flying as if tossed
from a welder’s workbench.
Or is it strength of my flowing
heartbeat’s constant pressure,
pushed into my legs’ conjoining,
that fulfills the pillar
of my desire?

Like a careful sculptor, you move hands
slow-working,
down the center-tuft of hair,
on my belly
carpeted
as if by tree moss.
Like a restless tide, you overthrow me
and grasp my upthrust limb
to straddle me entire.
I probe the surrounding wet-warmth
of your wide-spread now lower caverns,
so soft as dewy grass at sunrise.
Then I push
with thunderbolted fury