Borrowed wings
Grateful for their weight
Shed
For sprouting from my blades
Stronger white pinions
And hollow bone

White feather
Remember me
For I have forgotten
Where I have placed you
But our touch still warms me

Hope is the sacrifice of doubt for effort
-toward an effort not seen by mortals
-toward an end that begins again
Oh, dust it off now and again
Shake its dark glittering surface to the sun and say,
“I believe despite the distance.
I abandon comfort and reward now for greater gifts.
I believe I trust I hope
For I have prayed earnestly
The answer was not removal of the burden
But comfort
But hope
But love
And for this I rise again and again

The base of this mountain shifts
A disc of rocks spun into the dirt
Held together by a screw stuck in a cog
To get it to fly
I must
I must cave the entire glory into nothingness
To arise, I must pull the balancing pin

I’ll sing you the mountains flat
If you will it
Or walk them bloody and long
Til I reach the peak
Them drop to my knees in worship of you
I know where my help is from
I bow to the valley the setting sun
And make my way back down
Snow drifts melting into my hair

Death spoke to me in parable
Of cheetah and disaster
I cannot recall how I received
But I did not remember

Meadow, circumspect and fair
I wade upon thy browline
As a dolphin dances on air
Mystic moon-o face pale in my palm
I kiss you in greeting
Nightwind brushes past my knees
To play within the meadow
I bow and take my place here
A pebble a star a sunshard

That I were a sparrow
On wing in God’s sky
Only startled by the window
As I sail on through and bye

I mind hair in my face
The tickling beard
But the closeness of you
Superimposes
Over the fuse of annoyance
Stamping it out