2

Saturated in a circular perfection,
not yet pale in a perfect winter sky,
the determined moon wages
yet another way to inherit.
Sparrows fold their day in merit,
there are tales of feathery fames.

Once the grass was tall and free,
slow nights carried windy messages
across a perfectly curved sky.
Now the grass is hurriedly trimmed short
for the final, concave hour
with its mercury motion down.

Bold, defying cries of departing birds
roll across roadside tombs.
The old man finds no plea.
Never again shall his prayers
fall in love so easily
with crude saxophones on the radio.

Regal rises above hushed trees,
bare with dark, stiff tongues
itching in a night-belonging.
He has known the coming
long before these words.

Wild wings, a floating elegance,
ride dark water’s slow goodbye;
the songs of the grave jelly fish
break in a long time coming.
Abandoned ferries ruptures,
expecting snow’s illumination.

He waits for darkness
in leaps and recoils,
unprepared for the sound
bass players can make;
there are stiff remembrance reeds
in a sea of horns.

The eye, heavy with night,
colors all that might be,
rises, yet falls heavily
where many I walks,
continues the distance
from the here to now.

Tall night, fallen dervish snow.
Green grass groomed in white,
in an icy tell spell grandeur,
beckons to sparrows in thick bushes,
cringing in dark suspension.

With darkness tolling in rooms of surgery
he discovers a syllable,
his hands sign timeless tales.
Slow shadows glide in lost opportunity;
crossroads transmute, wither and leave.

There are winds that mold hearts of snow;
white birches that bow, twig strung,
at sky’s dark encounter.
Suburbia, evenings dark companion,
abandons misery and lost causes.

Children’s voices float in formalin
over bedside dead visions
and pale stories,
with wintry fantasies and laughter.

A breath of irrevocability
cloaks the dying of the day;
images of ancient ships
sail into a long goodbye sun.
Is there a new page waiting?

A man in the city
howls into the night.
There is a shortage of cedar.

Dog tired bones
slowly rot in a mire mass,
in hollow perpetuation,
where smug charlatans
hide dark deeds
behind a ceremonial cloth.