4/6/21

TO THE FALLEN, WE SING

 
   for Greg... 

 Of thread, cordage and umber
our patchwork armor is grown and shed
 Woven from strands long gone under
cross bonded with others locked arm in hand

 Who must yearn to remember 
the old adventures in which they bled
 Walking through darkness in thunder
also haunted by brothers lost to the land

 This conflict, universal
conscripted or drafted in the end
 Either to serve or to plunder
the long ago promise of a reprimand

 A soldier's song will be sung
and always remembered by a friend
 When it has torn you asunder
captured in the drum beat of a marching band...

3/26/21

STARS

for Brian Eno 


Like waves crashing on a beach
faces sinking into the murk
amid shafts of sunlight below
thriving green stagnant ponds


phantoms of angler fish merging
into fading profiles of Maya kings
legion drown into the scintillating murk
overseen by the eye of a cephalopod


or is that a spider exactly the wind
hisses over diamantine droplets
you're just conjuring a host of names
the human heart a polished mineral


making contact along the circuit
breakers sinking like a rosary
dropped from the deck of the Titanic
the demonic wreaths of coral gardens await


O, green whale, eagle of the depths
spilling incense taking turbulent shapes
of faces mirrored along the crown of eyes
shredding into angels of birds


the Ancient of Days reflected in stellar parallax
within a quadrant of time reaching out
for the heart of a burial into rebirth staring
back from the well fed wide open hole