A Friend

                 Yet, A Friend

Disgruntled by the muddied horses' hooves,
A branch side-steps through the greening pasture
Where a black stallion,
              Shaking off the doldrums of the night,
        Chases a fretful mare.
A gray gelding disinterestedly snorts at them both
And resumes trudging the muddied banks.

Lethargic, gray wisps of clouds feebly attempt
To hide the morning sun
As it haughtily discards its nightly slumber,
               Announcing itself above the southeastern shore.
And a smile forms the face thinking of a friend...

Yet, a solitary American Elm remains
Having witnessed the passings
               Of the first homestead-
        Now collapsed into a ruin of dirty stone,
        Fungus covered timbers and shattered glass.
But a friend remains.

From its branches, a red-shouldered hawk
               Spies a field mouse...
       But becomes disinterested as it scans
       The heavens over the waters
Where clouds present themselves as ugly, bulbous
               Misshapen heaps of lead and bloated bellies.
Quickly losing interest,  the hawk flees north
Into the fleeting wisps of clouds.

The lob lolly pines that flirt with the western fence
Begin their twisting dance with the wind.
But a friend remains.

To herald its august coming,
Horrific hurricane winds shred
The elms and the hickories
And absent of thought,
Snap the lob lolly pines.
Yet, a friend remains...

The paralyzing howl of the wind
Rips the voices from the ears
Leaving only faces frozen in fear;
And though the homes and the barns
Are cast as chaff before the relentless storm,
Yet, a friend remains...

The rain drives into the flesh
As a runaway freight train
Into a semi truck at a crossing;
And each is seemingly left
             To what remains of himself.
Yet, a friend remains...

And when the silence arrays itself,
            Even as death,
Leaving life no longer as it was...

Yet,
Remains
A
Friend...

Imagine all the...

Into the sea of dreams

Wisdom from the Plumber

There are enough twists and turns in life...
I see no need to add any more.

An ignominious memorial

Set apart from the rest.
Alone in life,
And alone in death.
Simply an unknown,
As are so many we pass by.
But still he serves a purpose:
feeding the trees...

Train Messages

Into the shrouded future,
What will become
And then written as history?

Even Now

Leeward Danger

The sun is low, near its demise, on the sea's horizon.
Even the breakers are seen by a child as pulling down
The very sun itself in their grasps clenched white;
And the clouds mount to the heights and so weight down
      the sun, burning red in the evening.

From out across the shallows, the sound of the surf
Upon the coral reef has its alluring charm to the unsuspecting:
      even now, the skeletal remains of a sloop
      finally give way to the turbulent, wrenching waters
      on the coral--full of its own deceptive beauty,

The child cries;
A man weeps to the sky.
But the weeping is only
                to be lost in the settling fog.
Even now, the moon is only something vague
                hung in the heavens.
For the sun, in its apparel red,
Succumbs to the night so oppressing.

A sloop is to windward,
Beating away from the land to its lee
With the reefs lashing out,
Foaming white in eternally unrested rage.

Hard-pressed to the wind,
And with double-reefed main and storm jib,
Yet, the land looms ominously to the lee.
The bow rises to each wave,
And so it falls in the trough,
Spray rushing across the deck into the faces.
Caught in a current and a headwind
(lest the wind veer around to the stern)
Surely tragedy awaits:
Its fingers ready to greedily grab
Away the vision given.

Yet, was not the sun aglow in varied hues of red
As it left us to the night?

Long Ago

        
In The Hands of Winter:  Thoughts of Magnolia Bend

A lone bird flies low
Over the estuary,
Cast a grayish hue
By the forbearer of night.
A Norther scoffs bitterness
In the eyes of the lone bird,
In silenced grace banking to the South.

The sun remains
Only as a smeared red
Faded among the branches-
Frozen in seasonal dismalness.
The first vestige of snow
Lay upon the ramshackle pier,
Withered and dry-rot...
Never to die.

Soon,
The night is choked by white

Aftermath

A question endeavors to form
But it proves elusive,
Leaving me pensively
To ask, "Why?"

What then?

Left, again to myself at a crossing.

As a freight train hurling towards you in a blur,
So can life be at times.

Gaaarrryyy.......
Gaaaarrrrrrryyyyy....
Wherrrree arrrree
Youuuu

Beef with an attitude

What??!!
You want a piece a o' me?

getting to hope

an aged precarious path to hope,
fenced off to keep the despairing away.

weathered mysteries