His eyes search the silent black sky

Then fall to his feet

Where all the stars have gathered to speak

He wrestles with their language until a kind of Morse code is agreed upon

In the struggle to understand

In the minutes to reach that moment

The magic is lost

A meteor interrupts the scene

the stars murmuring return to their nails

And once again the night is veiled

And once again the night is veiled

As the evening of the year draws near

I bend my ear to all the chaos that did appear

In bleak days soaked in fear

And mouth the word peace

Peace in the upcoming year

Drowning is often silent

We met on the high road

Each clanging our shields with iron fists

How poorly made were we for the environments

Of school and love and does it matter

Drowning is often silent

We met on the low road

Where man scurries from place to place

Shorn of adjectives, shorn and bleeding, limping past each other with eyes focused ahead never pleasantries to the right nor worries to the foot

Just straight on through

Drowning is often silent

In the mid range you gasp

In the depths are lost

But above the shark exposes his fin and rolls the great black eye of death

Mindfully and blindly biting

Rivulets of the twenties

Crisscross my brow

Wrinkling my memories of you

Engraving the few months together into some kind of glue

Residue of a heartbeat we promised never to twain in two

I struck the blow yet reknit in you a truth

Aerial antics

The moth flies

A migration of sorts from warmth to heat

From heat to death

As all must age and approach the light

I too become frantic

Until at last I recall

Heaven is home

Home is eternal life

But death upon winter’s brow

I can hear him sing

What is it now

What is it now

When the blizzards come boiling in

What is it now

No joyous mirth to greet the skulking skull

But pragmatism’s bleating sound

What is it now

What is it now

For last left the impatience bound!

Sighs the man as light’s jewels removed from heaven’s crown

What is it now

What is it now

All my unlit candles light when I read his words

Turbulent and kind, blunt and lying

I wonder if I could steal the buttons from his coat

And return them as a raven

For another word

Moonfall

The chill air coils me like a snake around you

Gentle and probing and harmless after all

Night speaks spreads sparks spirals

At the sound of you

Buried without vigil

Firm in your pine box

For fractions of a Dawn grown dim

We mourn smaller and smaller pieces of you

Your life!

Your heart!

Your smile!

Your wife pales in the firelight

No one to catch her

As she continues to fall

Fall

Fall in love

Ah, Peace! that desolation proved

The better path to trod.

Not now a friend to any man

As war spreads abroad.

We are! we cry to opened skies

And answer to our prayers

The death of man!

The swallowing grave full and full again

full and full again