Christmas Presence

 

 

I am here 

Warm blooded

In the icy dawn.

Pink blush to periwinkle blues

Paint the sky

Behind eyelashes,

Barren branches,

Heavy hearts hung high

Not just I 

sigh, exhale

thinking only of 

Others

whose day holds heavy fruit,

Hugs, in deep loss and great gains

ripe and rotten. I

Inhale the sharpness of

Those warm with love and

Those hollow in hopelessness.

Those that have just arrived,

Those that have long left,

Those that remain

In this familiar temperance

I feel

Here. And there

Goes, swift as the hours,

enduring as years

Ends and Begins

all Over and

Again.

 

 

 

Artwork by Hans Makart 1840-1884), 'Abundantia the gifts of the earth' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What Floats

 

Above all

else in the daylight

my favorite sight

or Phenomenon

occurs in the Sky;

Fallstreak holes, lenticular halos atop

tall peaks

and the mighty Mammatus.

I seldom seek

the Why's

As cycles spin

I think I may see them again,

when the Sun's slanted spears

Disrupt

It all-appears 

Darker, more real,

an occurrence

of grounding

without sounding too

Heavy.

Image credited by Alpsdake, in Public Domain (CC0),'Mount Fuji from Mount Ogochi' taken 10/22, 2000 via Wikimedia Commons.

The world in a puddle

Shiny onyx paved streets that shine 

like oil

kaleidoscope reflections of topaz gems

yellow lamplights tossed from windows

makes me warm

inside.

Lullaby metronomes count water

droplets, clepsydra down the side of the house,

this eave, my gutter

fills, pours this bass beads across paving stones

reminiscent of a game of puddle hop-scotch

I count the treble, 

it answers the hydraulophone

inside me.

That musty smoke that lingers like dye

in the sky, leaking out of rooftop chimneys,

house pipes blow and issue

a rescue signal, 

for those inside.

Countless poets have captured this in smaller 

rain barrels commonly called buckets.

We lost some along the way,

which accounts for the change in overall volume,

by composition, ice is also vaporous. 

Drops do both ways.

Nobody cared,

these were not the ideal conditions for thirst 

or poetry,

water was everywhere, like supply versus demand

as far as they could see, 

there was no end

to verses. 

Image credit By English: thesandiegomuseumofartcollection (Flickr) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Shadow lands

Consulting the calendar

to measure the finite edges of days,

proper rectangular weeks,

Lifetimes.

Using a ruler, I measure

the distance between

solar cycles inside

circles spin squared up,

and churn stuck in corners 

and lurk in boxes,

Leaving us to use the same angles

Over

And over,

Holidays make tangents, or triangles,

Between meaning and moment

This second

Memory, like haze that fills with light

remember the fog backlit in sun, rolling

over it,

The wind, the wave, the change,

The ends,

whites and blues

begin blending new for someone

We one knew upon a time. 

Image By OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons (When trees and shadows make art) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.