“Summer Like the Lion”

“Summer Like the Lion”

Summer like the lion has so little time;
Reflections on horizons only seem at rest,
Refractions, hungers in the higher grasses are at best
A blind, a routine introspection, attest to sun and pride,
Alike as natural season’s slightest change rewards the prey
Of both with perspicuous signs and insecurities but nonetheless
Concrete enough to cause a wonder in the every power; less
Than single clouds occlude the sun, the slightest hint of grey
Upon the main, both signal gain and loss. Clearly crowned,
They have no equal in selection’s schemes
Save Death, itself, yet each pays out in measured penalties. Extremes
In greatness and renown sustain but reasons, diadems and crowns
Subject to circumstance of cycles in the main—in means
A certain end—in cosmic tragedies beyond the need of seasons.

“A Summer’s Aimless Thought” or “Don’t Ask Why I Wrote This!”

And so the lesser heat descends upon us once,
But, come again?…and now the skin is damp
For no good reason, nothing more than clams
Must feel through all their night’s eternity, abandoned
In watermarked enclosure, rarely asking where
Their homes are logged–no! nor even more from life
Than what is strained for food. If found, the knife
Will end it all. From accidental currents traffic cares,
From aimless waves and tides and what seals may accrue,
Seadogs innocently involved and driven by their own
Insensitivity to feelings and not so much in interest as they comb
The seabeds looking for what mindless kelp must do–
For supper–Yes! We dine tonight: the sacrifice of clams and oysters,
And budget-minded shrimp, and the choir?–crabs conveniently cloistered.

“Where the Sun Has Risen”

Where the sun has risen marks the edge
Of all that’s been but, offering no offense
To what is evident in the primal disk, an evidence
Of what has been and not what is, a hedge
Against rebellion in the ranks; a wedge
Deliberate, a proof, divine, that in the imminence
Of being and in having been, an eminence,
Is occluded like the stars at noon, replacing every absolute with the pledge
Of probabilities within a sacred zone of time. Masked against the periphery,
The matter, more the consequence of having largely come
From nothing and ascended to even less, dissent expressed in helplessness
Addresses issues of existence as if they were a wilderness
Of weeds for the sake of worlds below and well beyond all mystery
Of galaxies, a Lilliputian sovereignty beyond the banality of the sun.

“From Chaos”

“From Chaos”

From chaos comes ordre; it’s a promise
Not a threat, and see to it that you heed
A willing radiance, an acquiescence, the need
For civility in the journey from initial surprise
To final recognition, from knowledge in the eyes
And from the illumined page while both are lost in wanderlust and steal
Away to what for all the world seems
Neither here nor there. Umbrage seeds both choice and compromise
As winter’s cold surrounds the heart’s dissatisfaction,
colder still than death
Itself and not at all to anyone’s liking. Where do joys of spring
Lead but to sorrows in the coming fall and from that fall, the season’s
Proceeds, naked trunks and brittle branches, reason
Feeding hollow hopes and simple traffic in dreams? What’s left,
My friend, but bones of separation
in the present and reunion in eternity?