Elevated Silence

In the elevated silence

You inhabit frozen thoughts

Ancient dreams that existed before we were born

Awaiting discovery ..... or revival

You are the fire celebrated in rigid secrecy

Bestowing rarified, simmering beauty

Words for someone known for just a short time.

October, 2021

Was Anything Real

Discord among prevalent voices

I never knew your path anyway

A story with incomplete thoughts

From a blurred point of entry

The few facts filtered from uncertainty

Layered with abnormal fault lines

Leading to unknown destinations

Was anything as was stated?

Was anything real?

Questions and doubts emerged

Time delivered added mystery

While you chose your point of departure

Why leave so many questions in the wake?

I had heard that a classmate from university days had taken her life. Remembering a random afternoon sitting on the grass of the accepted student gathering place and talking music and home towns and our families ..... and whatever else came to mind for those two or so hours spent together.

Light Among Darkness

It was your warmth that was obvious

And your gentle nature

A light among so much darkness

Casting beauty and calm among surrounding dissonance

Progression of Whispers

Misplacing ancient beliefs

Anyway, lost to sacrificial dreams

There was fire in renewed vows and hopes

In the lateness of demons

The revered cries of an existence

Navigating a logistical chaos to a return to intimacy

Tried in the court of indecision

We adopted relative nakedness

Believed in the progression of whispers

Feared latent retribution

And in the end caught gazing at obscurity

Relying on a miracle

And prayers once uttered every other century

And a skeptical observance of treaties

That rarely apply

October 20, 2020

The Necessity of You

 An inimitable soul                                                                                                                                             Born of necessity                                                                                                                                               The necessity of you                                                                                                                                         For what this universe lacks                                                                                                                               For what's been missing within the edges

September 2020

You Remain

 You remain                                                                                                                                                         At the conclusion of every dream                                                                                                                  At the end of every trail                                                                                                                                    Where each day begins and ends                                                                                                                    At the core of each moment                                                                                                                           At the deconstruction of your trials                                                                                                             And the ensuing emergence                                                                                                                         You remain

August/September 2020

Vision Of One

You appeared in a mesmerizing flash of kindness and compassion
Fighting staunchly for survival from physical turmoil and fear
Your beautiful spirit and drive obviously the brightest star
In a universe filled with immortal fire
A presence not previously known in the history of time
Nor likely to be recognized again
Your distant soul felt in tidal waves of warmth and humility
Possessing overflowing grace when facing extreme circumstances
Becoming everything
Conquering all obstacles
A revelation to skeptical eyes
It didn't seem possible that you existed

Unfinished Thought

Embracing the remotest of possibilities
In a congested and complicated vision of time
Of relevant and irrelevant dreams and moments
Of those burdens and myths facing down reality
You were in the eye of every storm

The Freshman

Blurred face in a crowd
Among a gathering of relative strangers
Posing for documentation of their presence in that moment
In that transitional place
Away from home and its comforts
Away from all that you previously knew
But one would never know of the uncertainty felt

This was a response to my presence in a group photo for the residents of the dormitory I lived in, Freshman year (1974-75) at Oregon State University. I was there in the photo, face blurred, surrounded by people that I barely knew and looking like we were one happy group. 

It Ends

I'm not sure
Let's call it a hundred years
A dozen nicknames
We laughed and argued
Occasionally failed to agree
The daily crossword puzzles
The daily updates on children
I watched yours grow and fly
The passing of parents
And now it ends
It's like it just begun
I didn't want to say goodbye
Thought I could hide from it
Though I knew eventually I had to give in and emerge
Planned it for the last possible moment
So you'd remember
The closing memory
Then you changed the timeline
You were already gone as I arrived
All those shared years became an instant finale
Looking back ….. speechless how length became brevity
How is this possible?
A shared history passed in the blink of an eye
Time always has the final word
You always had the final word
And it now ends for ever
The time that once seemed without end
Now is immediately finite


July 2019