Sunday, October 27, 2019

Morning in the Burned Cathedral
















The light streams through, alas it is morning--
I cannot bear the truth in its meaning,
for I have lost my life's most precious thing:
and with it I am wrought until evening.
Bear the brunt of tragedian's telling:
I'd not want to be soul's recounted fling
with crown jewels, buried sages' grieving
over lost moments, proverbs still singing. 
There is a moment when I contemplate--
all meaning fades in the trenches of France,
and all I love resounds, hollow as wine
no more in a chalice, bread on a plate.
My breakfast, ashes of Petite Pervenche:
wildflowers over the fields of its kind.

The Lost Church


Where have you gone, my little flock of sheep;
have you dispersed over the Vosges's pass?
Have you strayed to another river's glass?
Have you fallen down a gully so steep?
Where is the sacrament that with you keeps
you from death's harm, and with your greenest grass:
a pastureland of Liseron des Champs,
the pleasant place where White Asphodel steeps.
I wish you had waited for your shepherd,
I, standing in the ruins of the lost, 
did not see you go, nor will you to leave.
The procession for my missing, a dirge,
I singing, naive of the harsh wind's frost
on the autumn backdrop of burnished leaves.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Mentor's Last Rite


















My long ornate arms stretched to take you in,
hands welcoming with hospitality--
into the realm of Christ's divinity.
You put your two coins in the church of tin.
I ran the race of life to gaining, win,
you ran beside on personality;
tell he who made the robin and the tree
there was one more touch of madness or sin, 
you would walk no more, nor truant-wing fly;
your vestal wounds had all been scavenged, seared,
there was little left to love but a shell.
Priests would say your last rites lest you faithless die,
though the church's holy altar once was feared,
you walk into Christ's silvered arms full well.

Saturday, October 5, 2019

Proverbial Contusions
















Dance, dance as though the world had played a card,
we are one body, one corps the wind moves; 
we ascend when we succumb to the grooves
of higher beings, engraved oils of nard.
The precious tree became the oil and hard
as diamonds the covenant makes deep blue,
my skin has turned as cold as the dead's hue,
and still I am steaming your dark Swiss chard.
There was a moment when I doubted you:
I saw you as a distant politeness.
But now your hand has clasped my arm in life
and I die no more, I lie in ruins too:
you are my golden child of plaid kindness--
and I rush on, rising amid the strife.  

Song Of The Volta

I was divine and now I am far gone:
burned beyond recognition and accused,
left for dead as once broken and abused,
I am left with the carcass and the stone.
The chalk of my skull likely stays beyond
the years of torment and the hours of pain,
the old earth never washed away by rain,
the ancient sin not acquiesced by blood.
My innocence never belonged to me--
so can it sin? Oh can it anguished burn?
I thought to be a lovely lamb, as snows;
spring in the dun heather and the moss peat.
My towering hulk flew toward skies and churned
that the red blood has frozen in my rose.