The long
and wind-
ing road where
a river runs
through this Place.
My nest-my shelter…
A bough heavy with its
Burden throwing weight
under -fractured –arms-bends
splitting branches and hairs.
Shedding, peeling, bleeding
New growth smooth raw
and glowing in vibrant appearance
of new buried in the piles, behind the
Brook, between the pulpy sheets in the
Pillared fortress of my dark wood. Followed
by History, taunted under timber, mossy muffled
movements like the pumas pads, stalking, following
His instinct upwind of fragile deer quaking in the breeze.
Led innocently but not blind by the familial scent which
Rushes past as white noise……………
The rivers running away in daily rush,
the commute of clear water swelling
and surging. Overflows with dripping
anticipation, a communion-yet lingering
all ways, touching baptismal branches,
alone with the alchemy
tossed in the leafy mix, where lights
refraction concentrates and showers,
beaming and bemoaning,
the straightforward path
Toward the new season,
rooted in reason,
salt over the shoulder,
tears condense.
No turning back!
Abandon All Pride!
Mists obscure all distinction
of form-that is confidence-
The kiss of order, standing up
to reason gushing with fortitude
in the flow of perspiring possibility.
Down long halls lined in
mirrored repetition, rhetorical echoes
only bounce; bouncing rhetoric in repetition
mirroring echoes the eagle’s fading scream,
A crier over town, sad jays bicker greedily
gathering, stealing and mocking in their way
out of the thicket of things. Wandering wearily,
coming to corners where speckled rocks
from brooks and granites gain
cowering recluse, a charging cavalier
out of the mist. The berth anew, bewildered
by this liquid leariness.
Not a place to sea the source etched
in deep groves. Matters not of maps;
forecasted, charted, re-routing, and
never doubting.
Blind faith, la selva obscura,
branches of beliefs stretching,
growing isms opening buds,
revealing tips of truth.
From: The Past
To: The Present
A sacrificial lamb
sheared of
symbolic strength
covering paths of tortuous trails
dead ends trap and pray
begging of another way
boughs for none bending astray
beckoning behind knotty burl
snarled in growing, tread softly on shed
skin exposing the elements
Aware of wind, heightened
yet heedless of escape, leave in fear
bursting bold and brazen
The eternal flame
Embers, never forgetting
pulsing vein, rhythmic, infinite
bleeding, gushing forth,
in the current forward motion
breathing the days away
In the middle of the grove
downstream and deeper
drowning in the thick
Redwood Forest
Redwood Forest
"There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more." -Lord Byron
Feature image (1st) by Ilya Repin (1844-1930) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Second image, Redwood Forest "Fall Creek"
