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.

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.

Evensong

In Two Parts:
Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis

Part I: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”

Jesus sought
Lazarus
in the sweaty stink of crowds.
They pointed at tombs
amid fly swarms
over dog bones.

“If only you’d been here,”
Martha wept.
He sat
to catch her tears
and add them to His.

“Believe the mystery,”
his face replied.
Her eyes grew wide
into black reflections
of Judean rock-cliff mountains.

Crowds pressed in and
laughed at Him.
He looked at skies,
tracing ragged-laced horizon lines,
snake-drawn and jagged.

Martha heard Him speaking
like desert winds,
“Lazarus lives
in the shiny spaces
next to your tight-wrapped hair pins.”

Turning to the tombs,
He shouted,
“Come forth.”

They saw Lazarus
frolic out
in thready, shedding bandages
He took
roses,
and held them with his grimy hands,
bowing before Jesus.

The Lord laughed and
waved the flowers
in clouds
of butterfly-fluttering
petals.
They embraced and
He left Lazarus with a whisper,
then vanished
into massive, shoving crowds.

Martha rushed to Lazarus.
“What did He tell you?”
She asked,
as her face sought words
with eyes that blinked
behind long-white streaks.

Lazarus near-whispering answered,
“He said:
Believe.
The rose
will bloom again.”
Part II: “Lord, let your servant depart in peace, according to your word.”

Fog slips down
a Tennessee lakeshore.
Village townfolk
rest
under clay-red sundown.
Curtain clouds
arise.

Kingfisher sits
on driftwood twisted
witch-hand branches.
Tree stumps
cringe as if away from
falling cloud-fire.
Knotted wood knees
thrust and break
into bleak horizons
casting serrated shadows.
Black mud covers
deserted clapboards,
rotted corpses of barns
and horse bones.

Kingfisher’s wings
take to the sky.
He flies
above the sheeny purple-cloud reflecting
mirror like a spirit dimly seen.
Deep in the river’s green
wet innards,
catfish spawn their offspring,
channelbottom born.

Kingfisher’s voice
grows shrill and seems to me
to cry,
“Cold waters
called out
all the old men’s names
and swallowed
their flesh.”

Still, kingfisher
searches skies
for home.

Farmhouse lights
join stars,
while windows
fade
in blackness.
Swimming lightsnakes
shimmer
on a misted laketop.

Kingfisher, silent,
takes his rest.

Elegy for David Falconer

A simple, winsome song,
cut off
in mid-phrase.
Left
for us to finish.
We mourn
the morning innocence
and wide-eyed joy his parting
took
from us.

Curious chorister boys&girls
grieve
an empty place up front.
Dark or tow-haired once-fresh faces
weep.
We hear their yearning and want
to respond
yet hold our tongues.
We have no words.

Newspapers cop another
cold statistic.
“Yes,” reporters terse intone,
“It’s just a tale of senseless L.A. terror.”
But does that say his story,
even half?
“Why?” in sharp-edged stillness,
others ask.

His endless, soaring, praising preludes
reached
for pinnacles
few of us can even dream.
His gentle touch and loving song
surround us still.

The keyboard’s ever-rising cantilena
no one here can silence.
It never mattered why he left.
One thing is sure:
We won’t forget.
Now and forever
David sings anew.

Undiscouraged,
we who stay behind,
remembering,
lift
our hearts in hope.
We raise clear voices
bold
to sing with him.

NOTE: This poem was written during the early 1990s in honor of a locally famous Episcopal church organist in Los Angeles who died in a tragic gay-bashing event. Davido, vivas in Deo!   -R.