Isolation

Isolation

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My words sound of misuse

In the ears of others,

My touchings fail.

I am surrounded by mirrors;

My sendings come back

To flail me.


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My dreams slip
Into unfilled memories
Frozen in circles
Of silver'd glass,
Looking at me
Like unloved children.


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My mirror'd me,
The watching shadow I see
Waiting to heed.
Who follows who leads?
Do I follow the shadow?
Does it follow me?

                      

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Sorrows

Sorrows

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My sorrows lay

In the power of allurement

To trick hope upon the heart;

Of imagination to give visions

Of what will never be.

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Distance

Distance

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Distance becomes

Imperceptibly-

Until it forbids

Even another glance.

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Aloneness

Aloneness

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I walked by the sea today,

Aloneness as near to me

As the white foam

Washing away the footmarks

Of my last moments passing,

Leaving but an awareness

Of presence

Amid the ancient song

Of the seas endless reach

Upon the eternal sand.

Is this not the woe of life

For all of us?

We are placed alone

In each succeeding moment,

A singular piece of consciousness

Rushing forth our longings

For a oneness so known, yet lost,

That we must reach for it

With each breath of our living.

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A Christmas Wish

A Christmas Wish

  

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While travelling home on Christmas day
I thought to stop along the way,

And stay awhile where poems are made,

My plan to send a wishful cheer

Upon the ending of the year--

A singing merry rhyme

Of brightly glowing lights

And roundly ringing bells

That toll of Christmas time.

But as the verse began to sing

Of heartfelt joys

And first-time toys,

And laugh with happy tears

For life's remember'd years,

A silence fell

Upon the ringing of the bells,

A place unfilled by gifts 'n things

That Christmas always brings.

For what we need of all above

Is that our greatest gift be love.

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Inner Gravities

Inner Gravities

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We must give fluidity

To our lives.

So like quiet water

We flow gently

To our natural course,

Pulled ever down

From the peaks of delusion

By our inner gravities.

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The Dreamt Of Place

The Dreamt Of Place 

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To live once more

Those feeling flights on billow'd clouds,

To pass again the windstreams end,

To find the dreamt of place

Where moments passed
Return again.

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If I imagine

If I Imagine
 

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  If I imagine
What is not before my eyes
I place it nonetheless
Upon the throne of existence,
Among those things
That move the mind to ponder,
The heart to yearn,
And Spirit to follow dreams
Into the making of wonders
Before our eyes.

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Thinking

Thinking

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Yesterday there was something

I should have done,

But I didn't think about it.

Later when I thought about it

I didn't think it was the best time to do it.

Today I didn't think about it again.

There are so many things I don't think about
When I wanted to think about it

That I have decided to stop thinking about it.

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For Billy

For Billy



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Death Is Like The Ending Of The Last Summer Day

There is an absence now,

A place unfilled,

A chair on the porch where no one sits.

A loneliness lingers,

Like the quiet that comes

When all the Summer quests have gone ...

Beyond the ancient forest hills

The Summer sun is setting,

The lowered light making shadows fall

Upon the silver lake

Where laughter is remembered still.

And across the growing evening water gloom

I hear the lonely calling of a loon.

The last day of Summer is done...

Tomorrow will be new.

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Silence

Silence

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Only when alone do I hear,

When absence

Is so complete,

There is nothing left

But listening;
Listening,
To what was here before
And will be after.

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Teacher

Teacher

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What calling answered

Gives more the light and love

Of goodness,

Or casts further the net of hope

To gather the means of freedom,
And make golden the dreams

Of mind and heart,

Than what teachers do?

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Change

Change

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The colored leaves

Of Autumn time,

When briefer days

Like moments fly,

That sooner may

The Winter come,

When all that was gives way

For what is yet to be.

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He Swung Gently

He Swung Gently

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He swung gently in the breeze.

There was no sound 'cept

The creak of the rope around the limb.

A note was pinned to his trouser cuff,

It read simply,

"This man died for stealing a horse."

He was hung high

So the Coyotes wouldn't get him.

Off yonder a devil rose and danced

Circles in the dust,

Unconcerned for the man who died

For the want of a ride.

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A Poem To A Dog Friend

A Poem To A Dog Friend

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(One day a Samoyed met an Australian Shepherd...

and Fritzie was conceived)

Here's to Fritzie,

Alias Frickie,

Or Fric-a-Fratz,

Or sometimes Brat;

A dog dog

Of special soul

With watching eyes
 Who would join in a howl.

Fritz only stayed for awhile...
He made no promises for longer.

He was a wanderer

Who one day wandered too far

To ever come back.

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A Desert Run

A Desert Run

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The road opened to a long downhill run

Into a wide sand valley--

The bed of a primal sea.

We were travelers upon the surface

Of a great openness, running free,

Newness loosen'd upon an ancient world.

We were as young and as old

As the hot wind that blew the sun

Through our dreams,

Making magic in the world.

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The Drum Of Spirit

The Drum Of Spirit

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I hear the drum of Spirit,

A sound that rolls among the Summer valley shades

And climbs to echo memories across the mountain slopes.

I hear it low by meadow streams,

Where Teepees huddled near gentle waters.

I hear it racing like laughing dreams

Across the grassy plains where Bison grazed,

Carried on winds

That still across the evening valleys flow.

Oh yes, I hear the drum of Spirit,

Not lessened is the heart it beats.

Still it rolls it's call across the land;

Forever will it's song remain

To sing the memories of a time

When Spirit rode upon a wind.

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The Imagined Mentor

The Imagined Mentor

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We sailed the same sea...

I am thankful.

I could look across my bow

And see the set of your sail,

The lean of your mast against the clouds.

I could follow,

And in following

I learned to dance upon the wind.

I learned there is no tack

I could not take,

That however strong the gust,

And rough the sea

There is a course of courage and sureness,

A perfect set of sail,

That brings a passage pure and true

However fierce the gale.

Now the horizon is empty,

Your sail is gone.

I must reckon my own course

And sail on alone.

But it's easier now,

For all the times you were there,

It is easier now.

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Ode To Charmie Bayes

Ode To Charmie Bayes

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While strolling down a walking path

I came upon a grave,

Where lay the silent bones

of youthful Charmie Bayes.

So aged was the place,

So young the heart

That sadness so soonly faced.

The year was thirty five

When poor Charmie softly died;

At twenty years plus two
She left her life to rest,

Her blossom barely bloom'd,

To lie among the ranks of death,

Her sparkle ever gloom'd.

So rest my dearly Charmie Bayes

Upon this hill where now you lay,

And now and then I'll send a loving thought

To touch you in your grave;

A blessing to my dearly Charmie Bayes,

Who rests with endless Summer days

Watching strollers passing by her grave.

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The Arbor

The Arbor

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In the garden

Beyond the Lilac tree,

Where the arbor used to be,

The roses red would climb

And circle 'round

Those boyhood dreams of mine,

That lingered in the rose red light

Beneath the arbor's arching height.

Those joyful times when I was young
My wonder watched the roses reach the sky.

Now's the same as then;

When above the meadow flowers blue

The mountains reach above my dreams

No longer new,

And touch my wonder to the sky...

Like once a rose of red would do.

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A Winter Walk

A Winter Walk

                       

A Winter Walk

It was Springtime I remember

When first our walk began,

A widen’d forest path

Amid a sea of April green,

Our love a newly blushing bloom,

Our youth so filled with dreams.

So short would be that time

Before the sun-hot days of Summer

Would shimmer the noise-filled air

Along the distant roads we went,

While busy lives hurried our years

From youth to middle-age.

Fall had come with Summer's end,

A sudden chill and longer nights

That turn’d our leaves of Spring

From their greenest green

To die a death of orange and red
Beneath our slowing steps.

And now a cold and Winter white

Has come to cloak the trees
That once were young and green

That April Spring so long ago;

Our dreams of Spring

But a memory now

That lies beneath December's snow.

And as the Winter white now waits

Our passing to a season not yet here,

Like the music of a poem

A wish still sings 

Among our final dreams...

To see again those leaves of April green;

To find again another Spring.

Photographer Unknown

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