Where the sprawl of concrete
Ends
Replaced with boundless trees
The true north as the surveyor
Would tell you
Cities to towns to villages
To a gas station selling
Expired hard candy and Pepsi
The dead-straight 5 gains its
Slalom features through the mountains
Weaving between the timber trucks
Towards a state line signifying
Nothing
Heading towards the land
Of the Willamette and the Columbia
Gridlocked bridges and trolley bells
The back holding very little but
A whole new life, uncharted
Unknown
Excited
Unwritten
Tag: free verse
Eden to eternity
No archeologist
has the power of Sol
summer soul unrelenting
court of last appeal
refuses a reprieve
the currents cease
the ripples end
the inhabitants flee
if they have the power
unearthed the hunger stones
our ancestors telling us
what we already know
the famine age
begun
beyond
the bed riven with
fissures in a kiln
crafted in greed
a mountain of gold
cannot buy a single drop
of the Loire
abundant to
sparse
endangered to
extinct
Eden to eternity
Remember eternity
Remember eternity
Where the forest grows
Dies, rots, burns
From ashes to canopy
Towering shadows,
Coolness even on a
July day blazing
Footfalls silent
Bouncing gently on the moss
Past lichen-drenched logs
In the cycle towards oblivion
Mystery abounds
Spiritual and sacred
At dusk the fairies dance
Leaving their circles to
The other side
Curiosity comes, chided by sense
That their realm is not ours
Remember eternity
Where the forest grows
Raw heart
In pain we are one
that which cannot heal
full and complete
cracked not broken
pottery beautiful when the pieces
come together through
sweat and toil
the raw heart hurts
when touched
beating reminding
each of us we are still alive
in pain we are one
rise
soar
know that each time
we take flight
the ground will never be the same
upon our return
let us love our cracks
“that whatever is given
can always be reimagined”
in pain we are one
Reave
When there was no more
land to steal
and the people were made
wraiths
the last syllable of
the old tongue had been spoken
it was not enough.
Liberate
Rise like a single ember
caught in ecstatic swirling
tendrils of soft smoke
Rise like the first shoots
of a tentative spring
Rise like the Sun
greeting the East
Rise, rise together.
Neither dead nor alive
god never died;
was never alive.
except in human hearts
where the embers glow
and crackle upon
gentle pressure
to warm a biting
winter morning
where the lake stands
still, awaiting spring
so it may sway and churn
to let us know it
teems with life
Eternity blood
No one remembers when
the eternity war began
though the elders will
whisper stories that the
young dismiss as fantasy
as they put on tan fatigues
assemble their carbines
and head into a land
they have never known
to meet a people
who know not
peace
Irish (summer?)
Slate-grey winds beckon
an inauspicious August
marking the end of
a moody Irish summer
the starburst sunshine
long since past
more legend than memory
as rain falls in silent sheets
Two thousand and five
Moments long past
come forth, afresh
as if they arose
incorruptible, from the crypt
oblivious to the passage of time
each year since no more than
a mild nuisance
the bell rings on the dot
clear as dappled dew in the shade
8:30, first period geometry
on top of the hill, seven staircases up
the first day of the rest of my lfie
on an August day, unsure if school
means that summer weather is now
somehow improper
a continent, an ocean, a decade apart
yet no more distant than
the tips of my fingers
Unspoken Politics 