Late Night

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Late orange light reflected from the lake
Leaps up into the mountain’s shade,
And suddenly a crouching wind
Claws at pale, trembling aspen leaves;
A startled elk, foamed water dripping
From his lips, retreats back from the shore,
His wary head held stiffly high
As in an earlier imaging.
Perhaps this scene may be composed
Of some sharp sliver of a memory
As if I once lived by a lake; maybe a dream
Of languid autumn water darkening,
Of loons lamenting my heart’s own lament”
For what? for whom? I can’t recall
The real cause of my gloom or what
I thought the startled elk’s eyes meant.
Dissolved in forest shade, the elk
Huddles among hushed fallen leaves, and I
Can see his lurking absence everywhere
My glum mind seeks to look,
And I can listen to the aftermath
Of moaning loon calls intermingling
All across the undulating lake
Along the sprung wind’s swirling path.
And I myself also have vanished
From the rippling shade of aspen leaves,
Except as whirling consciousness,
Like lilting loon calls echoing
Over lake water when the loons depart,
And wind returns to linger just as wind,
And looming mountain peaks merge with blank sky,
And silence settles in my silent heart.

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Now Once Again

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Now once again the glaring moon,
A mirror in the midnight sky,
A single flower in an empty field,
Evokes the expectation that
An ancient truth will be revealed.

Who knows from where such expectations come,
Some source deluded or inspired,
Ancestral intimations that the moon
Conveys the permanence we know as change,
that what we love must vanish soon.

Thus sorrow for each pulsing thing
That crawls or creeps, slithers or strides,
Is given in this passing night to know
From the dark depth of need, or maybe fear;
Sorrow abides because I think it so.

So this is what the moon proclaims
As it has always done, and always will
For those who watch it at the full,
Who hold it in their sight, and, like our blood,
Feel tidal power in its pull.

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Late Night

Now Once Again