Nocturnes

*
I thought Orion swiftly would the lunge of Taurus end
and that Orion's soul this hunt's suspense would hast'ly rend,
yet his anxiety the static stars ever suspend
to broadcast angst to all below who forage, feed, and fend,

And who were these stars' namers that their names I should prefer?
I could retrace Taurus, Artemis, and Orion, her wooer
and thus make love the drama that the stars would always stir--
though amour's incompleteness then would evermore endure.

It seems that God has fashioned us unlike the stagnant stars
whose movements are unfit to script this flux-full life of ours,
so man, instead inscribe the clouds with our dynamic plight
since on their shapes dread forms to joy by sublunary sight,

And yet Those clouds shall ever tell of life's capricious weather,
for clouds cannot choose whether they'd seek lover or seek leather.
Good Lord! I pray star-ward to you: please clear this cloudy variance,
let shine Your Good and e'er emit the joy of peaceful permanence.

*

The sickly song of crackling fire,
in chorus sung on leaves afire,
does wax throughout the wilderness,
yet's only half of my desire.

The calming taps of tearful rains,
that winds do blow to dousing strains--
my sorrow's strife is double more,
yet can't cover my fiery gains.

*

Your sleeping eyes can't see your sleeping eyes
nor how soft sleep carves slightness in your smile.
Your dream-drunk mind knows not the sun's slow rise
nor when your breathe descends amidst its while.
These sights are mine to bear, though they're your life
and prove life there. This view is only mine
although it shows how all could end all strife,
Thus as your soul drinks up a dreamer's wine
I'll note your image in my sleepless eyes
with words: your fragile breath and fragile smile
are of an angel's caught in timeless skies,
Rapt by God's love, e'er freed from stress or trial.
So now see all I see that you can't see,
that you see God in ways unseen by me.

*

Leaves fall along with the autumn rainfall
to furnish the floor that the winds calmly travel,
Those winds that dully wore the dead stars during spring
But returned to the earth to the stars' silence bring,

And the doves in bark burrow, with their still, beady eyes
That God had furnished stiff to not show woeful sighs,
and the worms God had formed without minds to discern
Flail dumb in the cold while its skin cladless burns,

But my eyes show my pain, though there's no one to show,
and thoughts crawl through my brain to brood o'er natural woe,
God before forged me thus, so after autumn cold,
Spring cannot clean the stain left from autumns of old.

*

What grazes my hand when I grasp in the wind
But the breathe of old poets reciting their verse
And the ashes of their audience who had listened close,
Or the commands of dead generals who cindered out cities
Whose soot would join up with its enemy’s charge?

Its not hard to see why the wind sweeps with a howl,
When there’s naught but death’s potpourri lodged in its jowl.
As it howls, it asks me what I’ll place in its groan
To send out with this dust for the future to own.

And this one thing I say to inheritors of wind:
You’ll be cities of poets, and generals, who’ll listen
To this gust that had once given me all its wisdom,
And like me, you’ll ignore all its modest instruction
And disperse in the wind some new poetry of destruction.

*

The edge trimmer through a clement meadow mows
And lays soft-pedaled flowers down in dying rows,
Out-doing natural death in lethal brevity—
Death so usurped wins liberal time to dote o'er me,

And so I sleep my last for come the morrow’s morn
Bored Death will cut me like those blooms another strewn forlorn,
And cut me soon enough so that my casket may be tress’d,
With those late flowers neatly bundled, blissful, youthful, lifeless.

I know my nightlong sleep is such a cheap accessory
To death who will much longer make my poor mind thoughtless be
I nonetheless to mindless plains decide to shortly luff—
Though eternity, eternity, eternity’s enough.

But amid my sleep God in my mind a passion’d vision sewed
Where he removed me from a field of flowers all death-row’d,
And said I would see goodness joy, and joy in His goodness,
And soon this world where evil’s joy He would in full redress

I woke and quickly peeked outside—the flowers did regrow!
I knew that, though it did not seem, goodness as joy I’d know,
And what a cheap addition was my praise that death had bluffed—
Eternity, eternity, eternity's enough.

*

Clustered Peaches dried from summer's sharpening thaw
erupt, when pressed, with inner-ale tricking raw,
But yours lie clean against the basket's rounded rim
With spicy nectar still inside to wring from them,
A canyon's heat can cause a shrill delirium
that fevers plants to curl in weaves of dulcet trim,
contorted thus your red sienna hair lays down
and in the peaches' crevices sweeps all around,

Your eyes cast out a flame-froze presence deeply spliced,
like cool agate with fiery patterns on its slice,
they dimly tell a history of speechless stones,
shaped in the sea, in caverns hid, or left alone,
Then as you shift your eyes away and trail off,
your broad saunter rolls left to right, slowly and soft,
leaving to loiter fragrant strains of hyacinth,
the fading hint left to evoke your lovely width.

Your ruby lustre was not made for this tame earth,
but just to glide its plains resigned from human whirr,
To light its hearths, to pry the shadows from the land,
To dry up brooks, to sprint sunward from umber's span,
But flesh-contained you fill to brim unnat'rally
with nat'ral vim your breasts and hips soak inwardly,
You plump atune with oranges set to fill their rind,
so harvest come give me your peeling to unwind.

*

Side-winding sands, run the path of the wind,
Only think with the thoughts that align with its whim,
Sweep the flats, carve the seas, though your thirst never ends—
Fall asleep once the wind lacks the force that it lends.
Fleeting dust, though I came from your tones long ago,
I still slide as you do, only by windy throe:
Once we’re woke from the ground, dim instincts pick our way
Till they rust, dully rust, all our fierceness away.
Fleeting dirt, ribbon'd dirt, weave the blades o'er the lea
See them lie while you pierce through the sky tapestry,
they lie calm though you shall never share in their rest
and disperse, demon-tide, through the lands you must press.
Fleeting Days! and each one is used up wanting things,
an absurd cavalcade of unending yearnings--
And the floral pavilion this parade soon leads to
Burns away as you rub your coarse blur on its roof.

Cycle through, cycle through, through this life once brand-new. .

We met once when I cried to the god of the dunes—
And we'll meet there again—from God’s wind left inhumed.